As if I needed more complications for my already convoluted Life, now it seems I need to add Twitter to the equation. Everyone says it's the rage and if I go online and don't Twitter, I am a loser. Seems a few years ago, every hip person I spoke to told me Texting was the now thing and if I wasn't Texting, I was a loser. Before that it was Blogging. Before that it was Cell phones. Before that it was Newsgroups on modems that loaded up sites at the lightening speed of 56BPS and Internet time was charged by the minute. On and on back into the past, I seem to always be told I am a loser if I am not doing this or that because it was hip and would somehow make my life more magical and wonderful and fuller than it already was. Women would fall at my feet in adoration for how hip I had become. Platform shoes, polyester shirts unbuttoned past my manly nipples and ass tight bell bottoms would surely make the women faint. Yeah right. Disco lasted about five minutes for me and I was back wearing cutoffs and going barefoot.
In junior high it was the collegiate or Click look of northern Virginia I carried with me as my family moved to Oxen Hill, Maryland. What I ran headlong into in Oxen Hill was not the Click look. Blocks or Greasers as we Clicks called them ruled in Oxen Hill. Some ass kicking ensued but eventually they got tired of it and I saw the wisdom of wearing the occasional Ban Lon shirt to school just as a token nod of respect. I even got past the shock and awe of "Big Hair". But through it all, I always wore cutoffs and bare feet whenever I could.
As far back as I can remember, I was always just out of step with whatever current trend or fad was in play at the time. A day late and a dollar short as they say. Eventually I figured out that hanging with the cool kids was not worth the effort. I was never going to be a trend setter. And if I couldn't set a trend, I would be damned if I was going to follow one.
The nightmare I lived through when I tried out Pegged Pants one time was probably the first hint I would never fit in with the "In Crowd". Nor should I even try. Of all the fashion insanities I attempted as an awkward teen trying to find his path, Pegged Pants had to be the worse. Next to my brief encounter with Disco, it was definitely my most humorous. I was no seamstress or tailor. I was just a kid whose mom had a sewing machine. Got some vague instructions from some chick at school. Headed home and pegged my first and last pair of Levis. Apparently there are some skills needed to peg pants. Skills I had no clue of. Sewing in a straight line is key as I found out later. It is also a good idea to not sew up too much of each leg. Making sure the legs look the same helps also.
All of these things I found out about sitting in the Principal's office the next day waiting to be suspended for not only wearing pegged pants to school, but really badly sewn pegged pants. If it was not for the secretary in the office filling me in on just how bad they really were (after she was all done snickering and grinning), I would have thought I was a real bad ass for going against the rules and being sent home for a couple of days. When in reality, it was more likely a case of being sent home to save me any more embarrassment.
She suggested I look in a mirror when I got home to see what she meant. I did and immediately wanted to crawl into a hole. Besides looking like I had poured myself into these pants, the uneven seams rippled and jumped in ways that made one leg look sort of harem pants like and the other like a Frankenstein stitch job up the inside of my leg. The crotch had blown out before I had even arrived at school and well, I realized as I gazed in that full length mirror in my parents bedroom, this had not been one of my better days at school.
That should have been the sign of things to come for me. But no. Every so often I continued the struggle to try and fit in. Never seemed to work until the Grunge look came in with Nirvana and the rest of that fashion challenged crew. Suddenly for a couple of years I looked cool. Well, maybe not cool, but at least I blended in just fine. Faded jeans with holes in the crotch or butt and threadbare plaid shirts were ready and waiting already in my closet. I did not even have to head to Marshall's or Target to refit my wardrobe. All this time I had been ahead of the curve. It was not me who was out of sync, it was the rest of the World.
Finally happy I had nailed at least one fashion trend before it went mainstream, I rested on my laurels. And here I sit still resting on them. And even though my shorts are not cutoffs, they do have a hole or two in them. I don't sport bare feet as often as I used to, but I wear flip flops enough to have a serious tan line on top. And I just noticed plaid shirts were on sale down to Marden's. Yeah I know what's hip alright.
See Ya...................
(968 / 9655)
7 comments:
Boy, I hear you, sir. A day late and about ten dollars short describes my infrequent attempts to follow any kind of fashion (or other) trend. I spent most of my university days sloughing about in drab corduroy pants. I fit in with no one except the history professors who had corduroy pants and 25-year-old cardigan sweaters. And I wasn't even a history student, except for one or two electives here and there.
As for Twitter, I signed up too earlier this year, and then realized that it would become another time waster, and that I enjoyed verbosity (through infrequent blogging) more. So my Twitter account was deleted before I even posted my first tweet.
Pop culture trends suck.
Dude, you aren't hip to the telegraph? You are so behind the times, gramps.
I think I have a twitter account. But then again I'll receive emails now and then from Facebook telling me someone wants to add me as their bestest pal and I don't have a Facebook or a Footbook or anything.
MrMaCrum:
I have been debating whether to Twitter or not. I keep vacillating. Perhaps if you join, I will do so as well. If it is not to my liking, I suppose I can always not use it. I keep wondering if I can be non-verbose enough to submit a Tweet?
Peg-legged pants got you suspended? Rougher policies in your school than in mine. I too, ended up feeling almost like I fit in for a spell during the Seattle grunge period. Yet, I am so used to being a bit of an outsider, I began to question my flannels.
Heaven help me if pipe smoking ever becomes popular again.
PipeTobacco
http://frumpyuprofessor.blogspot.com
Fuck twitter, you'll never see me there.
I'm guessing that was the pre military school days in the early 60s. But with the Beatles the wet head was dead and pegged pants turned to bell bottoms. I'm just glad the polyester disco suits are long gone and boot cut jeans are still in but I won't go for holes in the knees unless the economy continues it's slump and then I may have no choice.
I don't do the tweety, facey, spacey anything either. I think that's the true downfall of the English language. It's one thing to have slang but to reduce things to 3 letter abbreviations of stuff nobody cares about anyway is a true waste.
El Cerdo Ignatius - As I type this, I am wearing one of my uncle's old wool army shirts from WWll. I love this shirt. How's that for some history.
Randal Graves - I get notices all the time that Candy or Susie or some guy named Jeff, Jack, Hell I don't know are following me on Twitter. Makes me nervous about what I am doing when I am not paying attention.
Pipe Tobacco - I was a repeat felon when the pants thing happened. A kind of 3 strikes and you are out thing I guess. The next year I was in Military school and no longer a threat to the staid upper middle class neighborhood I used to terrorize with my hijinks. Our school would not allow jeans, tee shirts, or sneakers. Naturally I wore them on occaision. Sometimes (don't gasp) all three at once.
BBC - Well I guess there's no use asking you to be my Twitting bud. Sigh.
Demeur - Yeah it was actually one of several events that contributed to my ending up in military school. To the best of my knowledge, I am not involved with Twitter Hitter and Yon.
but I won't go for holes in the knees unless the economy continues it's slump and then I may have no choice.
Oh - oh, hey, I can teach you how to patch knees properly. You can do a lot with a sewing machine that costs less than a hundred bucks new and sewing is sort of fun.
I'm just an old sew and sew.
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