This Time, I Really Mean It

There have been a few fashion trends over the years that I’ve sworn I would never do, only to turn around and cave to the general standards of societal pressure. I swore I would never wear straight legged acid wash jeans .. and I did. I swore I would never get a spiral perm … and I did. I wore shoulder pads and Izods with the collars flipped up and legwarmers and Rocky Mountains and Ropers, although I did at least avoid the Madonna cone bra and MC Hammer pants. Sometimes, you just gotta look back at an old picture of yourself with mall bangs and a Flashdance sweatshirt, and have a good laugh at your own expense. Hello, Aqua-net, anyone?

While most of my “fashion don’ts” took place in the 1980’s, current fashion sometimes creeps in, as well. And nowhere is my age and general level of frumpiment showing any more than in my overall distaste for today’s trends and styles.

I will never enjoy looking at a young man’s boxer shorts because his pants hang down so baggy it looks likes he’s carrying a load in the back. I will never look at a boy with a K-Fed cocked baseball cap, bill pointing to the side, and think he looks anything BUT mentally challenged. I will never pierce any part of my face, or wear a ring through my nose like Rocky the bull, or stretch my ear lobes out to the size of dinner plates. I will never wear skin tight t-shirts, and although I might have no choice but to purchase low-rider blue jeans because that’s all you can find these days, I swear I will never like them and never get used to them and curse them until the day I die and have to be buried in them and have my Buddha belly hanging out over the top of the coffin because the freaking low-rider jeans won’t hold in my gut. (PS Are Lee Jeans Ultimate Fit still the best ones for people like me who don’t want our hipbones showing? Not that my hip bones have made any kind of appearance since I was about eight years old, but you know what I mean.)

A lot of the time, fashion is right there in your face and you like it or you don’t. Sometimes, however, fashion sneaks in, in a more sinister manner. Under the guise of TECHNOLOGY.

Remember the first cell phones that came out, that were the size of a bread box? And boom boxes were the size of a Buick? Now, ipods and cell phones and PDA’s are almost as small as a credit card.

I swore I would never clip my cell phone to my belt, and I haven’t. I swore I would never use my phone to send text messages … and I haven’t. And I swear, from the bottom of my very bottom tippy toes, that I will N.E.V.E.R. walk around town with one of those stupid earpiece phones on the side of my head. I’m all about hands-free technology making the roads a safer place while you’re driving, but those people who walk through Kroger or the mall, chatting away, or who can’t even take the earpiece off long enough to have dinner in a restaurant, just look silly to me. And it annoys me that I often assume they are talking to me, when they're coming towards me in the cereal aisle and their expression is animated and their lips are moving, and I will often say something ridiculous and presumptous, like, “Excuse me?” only to realize they’re talking to the person in their ear and actually aren’t giving me the time of day, let alone asking me if I know where the Count Chocula is located.

I pulled into our local post office yesterday to drive through the circle and put something in the mailbox. There was a man just standing in the middle of the lot, with his back to me, talking to himself, waving his hands around and doing the rap-man’s posture thing. It’s a very small post office …. Sort of an out-post, and he and I were the only two people around. Then he ambled over to the mailboxes and dropped something in. Then he turned and quasi-faced me, gesturing, and waving his arms, and grabbing his nether-regions, and talking and talking and talking the whole time. He just STOOD in the drive thru lane, right in my path, and I was pretty sure he was crazy. I checked that my doors were locked, and the windows rolled up, before he turned some more and I saw the ear piece hooked on his ear. I guess when you’re not holding the phone, and your hands are free, they are suddenly more available for waving around. And touching yourself. While I waited (because there was no WAY I was pulling up any where near where he was standing) he finally, slowly, began to amble off in the other direction, talking and gesturing and grabbing all the way. He never acknowledged my presence, and I wondered if he had any idea how ridiculous he looked to the rest of us. Er, to me.

So there you go. I think they look stupid, and I’m stating it publicly: No earpiece for me, ever. I'll either stop what I'm doing to make or take a call, if I can't manage to hold a phone and talk and walk at the same time.

Of course, I swore I didn’t need a DVR and I got one (and although I still don’t watch tv any more than I used to, it sure is a relief not to worry about getting home in time for Dancing With the Stars.) I also swore I would never wear a fanny pack on vacation, and I did. So maybe there’s a headset in my future and I just haven’t accepted it yet.

But I will NEVER walk around talking on it and grabbing my crotch and scaring women at the local post office, all at once.

This time, I really mean it.