I’m back from the dead… again.
And, as a measure of atonement for my disappearance these last few weeks, I am willing to humiliate myself to a degree not reached since the time I thought it would be cool to show up to the school dance wearing super-tight, black pleather pants, a shredded white t-shirt, a red jacket with a thousand zippers in it and one shiny, glitter covered glove. I won’t tell you any more about that night, at least not yet, so let’s just leave it alone by saying teenage girls are the cruelest, meanest and most spiteful creatures on the planet.
Even today I still want to cry when I think about it.
So, enough strolling down the land-mine infested path I call memory lane, let’s get back to my humiliation of the day. I’ve decided to share with you another picture of my youth, but unlike most of the other pictures I’ve shown you, this one is from my high school years and not from a time I could be considered ‘cute’ or ‘innocent’. I cannot blame my mode of dress on my mother or my hairstyle on some farfetched modeling school disaster.
No, for this picture I can only blame myself.
Click for uglier close-up.
Let’s start at the top, shall we? I’ll run through what I see here and you can read along and see how much you agree. Remember to keep a bucket handy to catch your vomit and should you pee your pants in fear and disgust, well… don’t say I didn’t warn you.
- The Hair
This hairstyle is another one of my own creation, just like my penis-hair of Barbizon fame. I believe this style was created specifically to show off the grand expanse of my wondrous forehead to the world at large. If you were to whip out your t-square and level, you would find that my forehead is not only larger than the rest of my face, it’s also perfectly flat. When I lay down in bed at night, my forehead served as the dinner table for a family of mice and my hair was their bedroom. My ears served as the bathrooms which helps explain my dirty mind. - The Face
Do you see it? Huh? Can you? Take out your magnifying glasses folks because what you see on my cheeks and chin is not dirt, but my idea of what a cool guy’s stubble looked like back in the 80’s. Yeah, Miami Vice, George Michael and Bruce Willis may have been first on the scene with cool stubble and five o’clock shadow, but I took them all to task with my amazingly wicked unshaven look. So what if all the girls at school thought I was washing my face with horse dung and sandpaper? Who cared if I was forever explaining to strangers on the street that I wasn’t really trying to scare their little children with the hideous boy/man growth on my face? I had perpetual five o’clock shadow on my otherwise boyish face and that made me cooler than everyone else at school. Even though everyone, even my guidance counselor, insisted that I looked like a little girl with a glandular problem, I knew they were all just jealous of my obviously superior coolness. That, and they all wanted to be in my D&D club. - The Shirt
Look at how cool I thought I was! Not many people could pull it off, looking cool in a purple and blue wide-striped shirt, but somehow I truly believed that I was one of them. How could I look in a mirror and NOT see how ridiculously stupid I looked? Why didn’t someone out there; a friend, a family member, the fashion police, or even a fricking bully, pull me aside and explain to me why a skinny, long-haired freak wearing purple and blue stripes was a bad idea? What’s even worse about this particular shirt was that it was a half shirt. That’s right; my stomach was exposed to the elements for the entire world to see and still no one ever stopped me from making such a mockery of Mother Nature. As penance for this horrid fashion transgression, I will now strangle myself with one of my old bolo ties. - The Necklace
What can I say? It’s obvious that I’m a fashion idiot, so what’s one more little mistake? Yes, it’s a necklace made out of a piece of string and a couple of handmade ‘friendship’ beads given to me by a girl. Yes, ‘friendship’ beads were popular for all of five days before people gave them up and moved on, but was I going to let a little thing like the fickle nature of fashion deter me from wearing something given to me by a girl?! Hell-fricking-no! I continued to wear that sorry excuse for a necklace for about five years! I swore that it brought me luck and I took it with me to every party I ever went to because I just knew that it was going to help me find the woman of my dreams. How ironic that I never once hooked up with a girl while wearing that awful thing, and that the first week that I decided to stop wearing it I finally got asked out on a date. You know, I never made that connection until just now. Damn, I bet the girl who gave it to me put a curse on it. The bee-yatch.
Oh man, looking back I can’t believe how pathetic I was. I don’t believe I ever knew how to dress which leads me to question how I ever learned what constituted good style. I mean, back then I was a walking fashion faux pas, but now? Now I’m like a supermodel on the cover of GQ. I mean, take what I’m wearing right now for instance. I’ve got on a wonderful pair of pleated sky-blue khakis, a red t-shirt with ‘STUD + (picture of a muffin)’ in bright green plastered on the front, black dress socks and a nice comfortable pair of brown sandals. I mean, I know I’m a little ahead of the fashion curve of course, but still, it’s not as if anyone will look at me funny when I walk down the street, right?
Hey, why’s everyone laughing?
Sorry, but you can’t take the blame for this at all. It’s very unfortunate and horrible, but we ALL had bad hair and clothing styles during that decade. So bad that I think that’s when my first separate personality split off as a mechanism to blot out the memories . . .
i’d say that’s a bit harsh on yourself. there’s definitely charm in that nonchalant smile, and some girls get weak knees over long hair like that. i agree the shirt and necklace are a bit much… but you’re a mighty geek, so you should easily be able to switch out the colors on that shirt, and turn the necklace into a lanyard. suddenly -poof! – very suave, young college man.
There’s nothing like a picture from your rebel “I am NOT a geek” days that confirms exactly how big a geek you are. The only thing worse would be a fuzzy (yes fuzzy) red vest with black sleeves, black parachute pants and white sneakers. That would just be dorky.
OMG, It’s Kenny G!
But look at those big brown eyes, just yearning for love and understanding. Or are you jus thinking about chocolate cake?
Yeah, but what about the jacket and the patch? Does the patch say “boys” or “toys”? Or, maybe “Roy’s”?
;)
I can answer that, Shelley. It says “TOYS”, and it’s from the movie starring Robin Williams, Robin Wright-Penn, Joan Cusack and LL Cool J.
You remember, don’t you, MG?
“I can’t even eat. The food keeps touching. I like military plates, I’m a military man, I want a military meal. I want my string beans to be quarantined! I like a little fortress around my mashed potatoes so the meatloaf doesn’t invade my mashed potatoes and cause mixing in my plate! I HATE IT when food touches! I’m a military man, you understand that? And don’t let your food touch either, please?”