What a cute couple! You must be very proud of both of them, Phil.
I grew up in New England during the time when Dads dressed like bland, conservative, well... Dads, and they never expressed their feelings for pretty much anything. If you wanted feelings, you went to your mother, (and maybe not even then, if you had my grandmother) - This is the home of the American Puritans and Lutherans, after all.
I tried to be a little cooler and more expressive than that when I brought up my kids, but most of my flamboyancy was Disney related - watch, ties, shirts, hats, underwear, you name it. But we went there a lot and you can be silly when everyone else around you is silly - It becomes infectious and easy to continue when you return home.
I found that silliness creeping into my everyday work life, and soon became "The Mickey Mouse Guy" (I always wore a tasteful Mickey tie or watch or dress shirt along with a nicely tailored suit) but along with that comes great responsibility to be better than those around you so that you can pull off the flamboyancy. THAT is the key. If you're the best person around at whatever it is that you do, you can easily become a flamboyant "character", and that included a few Meterosexuals, some of whom are still good friends today. One guy used to be requested to meet with customers because of his deep expertise in Network attached Storage (trust me, that's a BIG DEAL for any IT manager, even today). There would be a few askant looks when he arrived, but by the time he left everyone wanted his contact info.
So I guess the moral to this story is something from the African Journal on American Speech:
"You can't judge a book by its Binding".
The good old days
