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Opinion: Cold Feet, Empty Head

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What is it outside, 40 degrees? 45? With a hint of rain in the air?

And yet if you look at Angelenos from the knees down, you’d think it’s July.

What passes for winter here finds us wrapping our torsos in parkas, shawls, hoodies -- sensible, cool-weather gear.

So what’s with our feet? On the day it snowed in Westwood and a snowplow was working in Malibu, I saw hundreds of LA feet clad -- barely clad -- in flip-flops and sandals.

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Look down at your fellow Southern Californians’ tootsies. Maybe they’re your own. No matter how cold and miserable it gets, some among us still step forth in practically naked feet.

I know, ‘’cold’’ is a relative term, and this ain’t International Falls, Minnesota. But for Los Angeles, it’s cold, and The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, like our mothers, say we need to dress all of our bits warmly. Especially the feet, which, being on intimate terms with sidewalks and streets and grass -- if you can find any -- are the easiest bits to get wet and cold, and to make the rest of our bodies feel that way.

Southern California’s ‘northern hemisphere dress code’’ means bundled-up on top, beginning at the North Pole of the head, and then shedding clothes the nearer to the feet-equator. It looks ridiculous, but it must mean something symbolic, or people wouldn’t invite chills and misery from the feet up.

Maybe we’re reluctant to give up, even for a few days, the fantasies that accompany living in a hemi-demi-semi desert paradise. We can throw on a coat and a scarf and maybe pretend we’re at the Sundance Film Festival, but our feet somehow have to look ready to step onto the sand at Zuma Beach. Maybe some dim, grim memory of life elsewhere won’t permit us a foot flashback to the boots and socks of winter in the East Coast or Midwest.

Or maybe we’re just too cheap to buy real shoes for a few weeks of wet winter weather. If that’s the case, you’ll have plenty of money to spend on Kleenex and cough syrup and chicken soup.

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