Biased Observance

[talon]

Must have been coincidence, but the haberdashery habits of the men frequenting a particular establishment took on some rather decided color coordination partitions. I doubt it was planned this way.

As I was eating lunch on a Sunday at a buffet type restaurant, I started noticing that many of the men seemed to be engaging in some sort of really strong color preferences. I doubt it had anything to do any outside forces. At least I don't think it did, although that might explain why the men seemed to be so specifically color coordinated.

After I started noticing this color preference, I kept a tally on the tape register receipt I had.

What it broke down to was: white men with kids wearing camo: 19 - jacket, full camo garb, T-shirt, or just pants in camo - it's hunting season so that accounts for part of it but not why it was only white men with kids. Today is that particular buffet's salute to the Armed Forces, so I expected more people in BDU's - of all colors and both genders, not just white men with kids.

Single black men wearing green dress suits with lighter green shirts and darker green ties - 11. They looked snazzy, all dressed in suits, but kind of lonely, each one eating off by themselves. I wondered why. They probably just came from church. Did the local churches have some kind of dress code or was there some special ecumenical reason they were dressed in all different shades of green? If the suits were identical, I'd suspect membership in a group - maybe the church choir, or ushers, or something, but they were different even if they were all green.

Asian men with large families where all the other adults were female wearing dark brown suits with pink shirts and red ties - 16. There were generally 3 or 4 women and 7 or 8 children accompanying each man. They took up several tables each. None of them sat near each other. Again, they looked like people just coming from church and again I wondered if there was some reason they all sported the same color combination.

Latino looking men wearing navy suits or pants with tan shirts and no tie - 11. Most were accompanied by at least one other person. If the other person was female, they had at least 1 child. None of them looked like they'd been to church, but they could have been. Most of them looked as if they'd left part of their suits behind, so maybe they had been to church and were just quicker to divest themselves of uncomfortable ties and/or jackets.

Biker type men, white, black, or Latino looking, wearing grey tank tops with sleeveless brown or black vests and khaki chinos - 17. Like the black men in green, they sat alone. If they'd been sitting together or acknowledged one another, I'd suspect they were part of the same biker gang, but they didn't. It's kind of weird to see so many biker men dressed so very similarly, especially since I didn't see a single bike in the parking lot and none of them had the tattoos, helmets, or baseball caps real bikers around here generally wore.

The numbers are probably not significant, and if I were to visit the place every Sunday for several months, maybe I'd notice a trend or maybe it was just a fluke that so many men were dressed so similarly within very specific and identifiable groupings.

It's not of any significance, just that these particular men stood out in such crowded conditions, and it made me wonder. I don't know how many I saw before I started noticing the trend, so my numbers are low ones. That and I was there less than an hour, so it's certainly not statistically significant in any way.

Still, it makes for interesting story speculations, a detail that can be added to give depth to a story or to help define a culture or social mores or something.