“Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door”. – Coco Chanel

Ask yourself this question… how many peeps do YOU know that wore a “Back off man, I’m a Ghostbuster” sweatshirt in school? I couldn’t tell if anyone else in my school would wear one, because it’s difficult to see your classmates from a gym locker. But that’s me.

I’m really lame in the fashion department. (I’m also lame in many other departments, but for the sake of this note we’ll stick to my lameness in fashion). 

If you know me well you’ll know enough that I have a consistent look. The T-Shirt/jeans look is my look. Basically I have several stacks of over 100 T-Shirts. I usually just grab my pants and the shirt from the top of a stack each morning. When I go on vacation, I count out how many days I’ll be gone, and then count down from the top of the stack how many T-Shirts I need. This way I don’t have to put any thought into what I’m wearing.

My wife is astounded by this fact. My standard reply is either a wink or a “Hey, you married in to this” comment. I wish I had a count of how many times my wife shook her head in disbelief at me. That would be a cool stat.

I’ve never been a fashionable fellow. I’m sure that might be hard for you to believe after hearing about the Ghostbuster thing, but it’s true! Even when I was a kid, I was fashionably challenged. For instance, I wonder if I REALLY liked this outfit:

I certainly hope not. I have the look of a bad comedian or real estate agent. You’d fast-forward 20 years & you’d see my face on a ‘Red Blazer Realty’ card or something.

(Sidebar: Can ANYONE tell me why Real Estate is the only business that has the requirement of having the salesperson’s fucking face on their business card? What’s up with that?)

We had no money when I was a kid. One of our favorite places to shop for clothes was a place in Quincy, Mass called the Bargain Center. It’s long gone now, but it used to be a very popular place for those who wanted to save a buck on clothing. The locals would call it “The Bah-Gee”. They’d say: “We’ah goin’ to the Bah-Gee”. The Bah-Gee was NOT known for brand names, that’s for sure.

My father took me there once to buy some clothes for school and ended up picking some items for himself. He bought some sneakers that had this enormous “M” on the side of them. Where we lived, if you had sneakers that weren’t cool, they were called “Bo-bos”. I was laughing at his Bo-bos and I asked what the ‘M’ stood for. Without missing a beat, he answered: “Macho!”

He would have gotten the last laugh, however. I remember ending up with this disco zoot suit from the Bah-Gee one year: 

But I think I may be getting better as I get older. I picked out a suit last year that I liked, and it tuned out to be designed by Michael Kors. I told my pal Steve “Hey! This was designed by the head judge of Project Runway”! And then I said to myself, ‘I hope I didn’t just say that out loud’.

I’d like to hope that this trend would continue, but methinks I am what I am by now. I’m not sure I can change my fashion awareness.

I ain’t afraid of no ghost.