If these ominous clouds clear up, I’m scheduled to play my first game of old man’s baseball tonight. I play right field for the 26 and older Cubs.
Last year, our team made the switch to pinstripes, identical to the ones you see an angry Lou Piniella wearing above. I hate pinstripes. Their outdated. And they make you look like a husky douche. Two years ago, we wore gray pants and blue tops. I wish we still did.
Can I get a witness?
See all: Baseball-related posts
After seven long years, I have finally retired spiky (aka disheveled) hair, some three to four years since it went out of style. In recent years, I would periodically rock the faux hawk for fun, but my decade mainstay was usually spiky — until now.
Before the spike, it was an outdated Caesar cut. Before that it was a naturally curly shag and sometimes Afro cut while in high school. Before that it was a bowl cut in middle school. And before that it was a clean-cut part in elementary school — no funny business.
I’m not sure what to call my new do, but I’ve started “swirling” it from my non-parted side to my parted side, thereby disguising any part whatsoever. I guess you could technically call it a “Reverse Cowlick.” Some hipsters I see when traveling to San Francisco or New York display a variation of this cut, but much more delicately than me.
Whatever it is, I’m happy to be spike free. It was time.
“That not look good, daddy,” my clever, almost 3-year old girl said in broken but piercing English on Monday, upon seeing my newly purchased white leather belt around my waist. “That looks better,” she assured me, after I switched to a brown belt.
My confidence in fashion judgment is at an all time low right now. To make matters worse, Sadie told me I was “stinky” over the weekend. Great — out of style and stinky. Just what I need.
In speaking with a 14 year-old boy at church a few weeks back, this was the reply given when I asked how he was doing:
My mom grounded me because I came home past my curfew last week. It sucks — she took away my PS2 and all my girl jeans.
The grounding and PS2 parts I can relate to. I was a boy not long ago (and still am to an extent). But the confiscated girl jeans as punishment? I just don’t get it, even if that’s what budding hipsters are wearing now.
Blake, I’d like you to meet Behind The Times. Behind The Times, say hello to Blake.
Smooth Harold is penned by Blake Snow, a freelance writer and new media expert living the good life with a wife and three kids. The site covers what he does for a living, what it's like to be a father, what he thinks about his surroundings, and what he does to entertain himself when not talking in the third person. He can be reached by email.
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