Dwain Walden

The best I can tell from watching movies, my Irish ancestors wore kilts. I think the Scots get most of the credit for kilts, however.

A kilt is a skirt. And I’ve never made fun of a guy wearing one of these kilts, especially if he was tossing utility poles. The Scots do that at their annual games. Maybe it’s strange, but I just never thought of light pole chunking as a sport. I don’t know if my Irish ancestors did this. I think they liked to drink and chunk Scots.

Now just a couple of weeks ago, a kid in West Haven, Utah, wore a kilt to school as a prop for an art project. His principal told him he would have to change clothes because his outfit could be construed as “cross dressing.”

Shortly afterward, school officials apologized, noting that it was an expression of the boy’s Scottish heritage.

So a lot was made about nothing. If a kid with the last name McFarland had showed up in connection with an art project wearing a kilt, I would not have thought of him as a cross-dresser. He wasn’t wearing eyeliner and rouge, nor was he carrying a purse. So I would just have advised him to be particularly careful on the seesaws and monkey bars.

Sometimes, mountains are made of mole hills. And I’m not saying that back when I was in school, a kid dressed this way wouldn’t have been laughed at. But if he was brave enough to do it, and if he hit a couple of the bullies with a utility pole, I believe he could have pulled it off. Excuse me, maybe I should say he would have made it through the day.

It’s interesting to consider how people dressed then and now, and how we associate the word “proper” in our perceptions.

For instance, Jesus Christ wore robes and sandals. So if someone dressed like that today, would we first think of cross dressing? Or would we think of a holy man?

The other night I watched an old movie featuring Chalton Heston. He wore a white skirt (let’s call it a spring toga). So it must have been before Labor Day. He was portraying a bold, kick-you-in-face character. It was all about time and place.

Now everyone knows Heston was a gun-toting ultra conservative in real life and mostly played such roles in movies. He seldom wore a skirt. I think he established that a man’s man could wear a skirt if the time and place were right. But I don’t think it ever got right for John Wayne. I just can’t hear him saying, “Watch it pilgrim! Don’t try to blow smoke up my skirt!”

This kid in Utah never implied he would wear his kilt regularly. And, of course, on first sight the school official didn’t think it through.

So if there’s a moral to all of this, I think it’s about thinking more than one layer deep when we confront issues. Run some scenarios of cause and effect. Now it shouldn’t take a boy wearing a kilt to illustrate all of this. It was just ripe for analogy.

So I got to thinking. What if our congressmen wore kilts to work once or twice a month to promote the concept of deeper thinking. Let’s just say it would be a good way to “air things out.” But on second thought, in this scenario it might actually be construed as cross dressing, so forget that idea.

(Dwain Walden is editor/publisher of The Moultrie Observer, 985-4545. E-mail: wain.walden@gaflnews.com)