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Civility’s brief reign

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Special to The Times

The recent rain was an inconvenience at best and, for some, a terrible tragedy. But I confess I’m a little disappointed to see the skies are clear again, mostly because along with rising barometric pressure come the bare midriffs, conspicuous cleavage and exposed toes that make this city such a playground of epidermal excess.

Was it just me, or did some people look a lot better while it was raining?

Folks I used to ignore in the coffee shop or supermarket, often out of courtesy -- surely their entire wardrobe was in the spin cycle and they had no choice but to run errands wearing only their underwear -- suddenly appeared interesting, literate, possibly even in possession of advanced educational degrees. And that’s not just because people were wearing college sweatshirts.

There was, against all torrential odds, a sartorial sophistication in the soggy air. It was as if Seattle practicality had collided with New York-style consciousness, creating a thunderclap of better outfits and more feasible hairstyles. Halter tops were suddenly replaced by sweaters; the ubiquitous flip-flops were transformed into boots or at least shoes with actual soles. There were even reports of people wearing socks.

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I became aware of this reversal shortly after the holidays, when I witnessed a woman dashing from her car into a used-book store on Glendale Boulevard. With her decidedly non-low-riding corduroy pants, yellow rain slicker, and charcoal-gray turtleneck she looked liked like ... a regular person. Her pleasantly disheveled hair was unburdened by “product” (or maybe the control paste had simply washed away) and her fine-boned face, a veritable 1980s-era advertisement for “clean make-up,” seemed to say: “I’m a nice person, a smart person, the kind of person who might answer the phone when you make a pledge to PBS or, at the very least, visit a used-book store on Glendale Boulevard.”

I swear I saw the same woman, not weeks earlier, wearing a powder-blue vinyl miniskirt, a mesh poncho and Ugg boots. She was sitting in the waiting area of Delightful Nails reading a copy of Us.

And what about that appealingly unkempt-looking guy I spotted in a Trader Joe’s produce section during the downpour? He was wearing high-quality hiking boots, nice jeans and an honest-to-goodness grown-up raincoat. I wanted to speak to him, but I was so intimidated by his obvious cultural superiority and sexual prowess that I could only cower admiringly from the dog-food bin.

Oddly, the week before, he’d been in yoga pants and man sandals, drenched in Ax deodorant body spray. With nary a tomato in his cart, he’d been loading up on Zone bars and yakking on his cellphone about ketosis. OK, I didn’t actually see this firsthand -- I’d never laid eyes on the guy before that rainy day in Trader Joe’s -- but I have no doubt the deluge had turned him into a major intellectual of our time, or at least someone who looked like one. The rain, along with making us dress better, actually made us smarter, if only for a few weeks.

You know how they say that when you feel sexy you are sexy? That theory was long ago disproved by the entire phenomenon of male adolescence. What is true is that being smarter, funnier and a better dinner-party guest has a lot do with not dressing like a 6-year-old or a hooker. And during the recent monsoon, as Angelenos skipped across puddles sporting wool scarves, rain hats and homemade knit sweaters over their Pilates-toned bods, the city seemed to crackle with enlightened thought and obscure German Expressionist references.

Instead of admiring our tattoos in the reflections of store windows, some of us thought about aiding tsunami victims (most often while running as fast as we could through the pelting rain toward our cars). Instead of squeezing into yet another baby tee that spelled out “Cradle Robbed,” we put on well-tailored jackets. For once, we were more Amelie than Britney, more Redford than Timberlake. Instead of preening, we pondered.

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For my part, after hydroplaning my way to the gym and discovering the parking lot was full, I drove straight home and spent two hours reading a Gunter Grass book I’d abandoned in the late ‘90s. And though I can’t be sure, because no one was around, I think I looked really hot. Pretty impressive, considering I hadn’t taken a shower in three days.

But now the Ugg boots are back -- pity no one wanted to wear them in the rain, their being boots and all. And, admittedly, I wore flip-flops last week, but that’s only because after going to yoga I got a pedicure, during which time I was able to bring myself up to date on Brad and Jennifer’s split.

Things are returning to normal, which is to say that I’m back to ignoring most of the people I see in the coffee shop. But like a lover from the distant past -- or, let’s face it, like someone’s mom -- I can now see a hidden normalness in many people who might otherwise appear simply freakish.

I know that on top of the low riders, copious piercings and those Asian-style slippers that are actually made of construction paper lies a citizenry capable of wearing coats, shoes and maybe even gloves. We are nothing if not a city that believes in its own potential. Someday, with any luck, we may even start tying our shoelaces.

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Meghan Daum can be reached at weekend@ latimes.com.

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