Sharp Dressed Man?

As the song says, "Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man." And yet, The Wife married me anyway. (Just one more reason why I am very lucky. Possibly even the luckiest.)

Don't get me wrong, I've got style. It's just not good style. And what little style I do have is from around 1985.

Have you ever noticed how a lot of people (espcially guys) lock into what was "cool" in their youth, and get stuck in that style for the rest of their lives? You'll still see some guys sporting the Miami Vice jacket-over-t-shirt, no socks look. Or women at the gym wearing Flashdance-era leg wamers.

Sometimes, people get locked in to styles that were never cool. There is a truck driver I see occasionally at work who is still sporting the John Denver look, with the straight bowl haircut and the round little glasses. I have to suppress a laugh whenever I see him, and usually end up singing Thank God I'm a Country Boy for the rest of the day.

Me, I'm stuck in 1985. That was the year I left home for two years to be a Mormon missionary. Mormon missionaries usually leave home with two sturdy, dull, bland suits, and three or four dull, bland ties. When I got there I found that one of the popular activities for missionaries on their one day off a week would be to go to thrift stores to try to find good-looking used suits and stylish ties. (When you wear a suit and tie every day, it's nice to have a little bit of choice.)

What everyone was looking for were zoot suits with narrow lapels, and pants with pleats and cuffs. And the ties needed to be skinny. The skinnier the better. That's what was cool when I was 19 years old. So that's what I still think looks good. Much to The Wife's dismay.

Now that is a sharp-dressed man!

She doesn't like my skinny ties. She thinks they look silly. Over the years I've gotten rid of most of them, but I kept four or five of my favorites. Last summer when The Wife was off visiting her sister, I wore one of my skinny ties to church. And nobody openly mocked me. At least not to my face. (I'm sure the snickering was for some other reason.)

I try to tell her that skinny ties are coming back into fashion. I tell her that the guy on the television program Bones wears skinny ties. She replies that if I were as good looking as the guy from Bones, I could get away with wearing skinny ties, too.

The Wife also thinks my pants with the pleats in the front make me look fat. I disagree. I think it's my fat in the front that makes me look fat.

But, The Wife is a lot more tolerant than most women would be. Back when I was single I bought a green suit. I think it's a pretty good looking suit, so it probably isn't. But it's green. Very, very green. (And if even I think it's too green, you can be sure that it is way too green.) I wore the green suit, even though my Aunt Maxie strongly warned against it, back when The Wife was still just The Girlfriend. And yet, she still married me anyway.

She may not like my "style," but she lets me wear whatever I want, with only an occasional eye roll or exasperated sigh. She's wonderful.

She's also lucky, because it could have been worse. I could have gotten locked into the tight-white-suit John Travolta look. Or the dirty sixties hippy look. Or the MC Hammer shiny baggy pants look. Or that silly John Denver look. Thank God I'm not that country boy!