Fashion Statement

I have a lousy memory.  I do, however, remember the day I learned that I was a fashion misfit.

I have very little childhood memories.  I’m not happy about this since I believe that I had a pretty good childhood.  It would be nice to have the memories to back up this claim.  My brain seems to have only a few short scenes from the past randomly saved off as time went by for me.  I remember nothing at all from fifth grade and back.  I remember having a few conversations with a few teachers from the middle school years.  I remember only a handful of moments from high school.  College is a blur, but that might not be my memory’s fault.

I remember a particular moment in time that has stuck with me for no good obvious reason.  The brain is an odd mysterious thing.  Somewhere back in high school (the late 1980’s for me), I was hanging out with some friends at a high school basketball game.  There was Ellen, Patty, Brent, and Mark.  It was a warm night and I was wearing shorts and a tee-shirt.  Actually, it didn’t matter what the temperature was because I was going to wear shorts until somewhere near mid-winter.  I also had on my favorite pair of high-top sneakers and a pair of tube socks.  The tube socks had three stripes, as a good pair of tube socks should.

The way I would wear my socks was exactly how I thought everyone should:  hike them up!  Tube socks were made to be worn pulled all the way up, right?  I learned my sock style from watching professional basketball in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.  Go ahead and do a Google image search.  I’ll wait.

You see?  Socks were up.  I’m sorry, what’s that?  Your auto-correct feature accidentally searched images for “tube snakes”.  Oh, you probably should be more careful.  There are some things that are really difficult to un-see.

So let’s get back to the high school basketball game.  Ellen comes up behind me and with the speed of a ninja leans over and pushes my socks into a scrunched pile of fabric at my ankles.  She then reports to me, “Socks are down in the late 80’s”.  Since she was a girl, and I was an awkward teenage boy, I conceded the point and have taken her fashion advice seriously ever since that night.  My socks have been pushed down into a scrunched pile ever since.

Fast forward to the year 2012.  My sons both wear their socks all the way up.  They are younger than I was on the night I learned that I was not a walking billboard fashion statement.  And they insist that the socks should be pulled all the way up.  I’ve tried to warn them.  Ellen would be so disappointed.  They either wear them all the way up or the wear ankle socks that you can’t pull up.  I’ve seen their friends hike their socks up too.

They might be right.  Maybe socks are back up in the 2010’s.

A recent Facebook poll that I set up should help clear up this issue.  Please help me and my boys out by visiting with your Facebook account:

http://www.facebook.com/questions/362080590541590/

Thank you for your vote.  I need to make sure that my boys are not the fashion misfit that their father was (and still is).

Buy my books.

(Hey, more than one book?  Yes, I wrote one for the pre-schoolers!)