There's one little gift of knowledge I'd welcome this season. I would be thrilled if someone could explain this singular bit of California conduct to me.

I've lived here since I was about 16, but clearly that hasn't been long enough to understand this quirk in our behavior, so I can only surmise it only comes with the Golden State DNA.

It could be 45 degrees, we could have rain squalls and puddles to our ankles, and young people still wear flip-flops (or ''thongs,'' as we used to call them, before that name got repurposed for a different article of apparel and moved northward from the ankles and into greater and more louche renown; thank you, Monica Lewinsky).

Even when the mercury plummets below, say, 60, the young men, too, but mostly young women, sensibly bundle into puffy parkas, sling scarves around their necks, pull on knit gloves and caps -- but still slap around the wet, cold pavement in flip-flops. Is it that they can't manage the smell of damp socks? Have their feet grown so broad from a barefoot Nature Child life that footwear is an annoyance? Are their pedicures too fancy to hide? Or do they truly feel the cold from the top down? Or, to put it another way, global warming from the toes up?

Your solutions and suggestions are welcome -- I look forward to reading them, with my slippered feet up.