With apologies to “Friends”
MODERN DAD | By Jon Show
Sept. 6. I’m not very good with clothes. I’m not very good at dressing? Whatever it’s called, I’m so bad at it I don’t even know how to phrase the statement correctly.
Except for maybe a brief period in my mid-30s, I’ve never been much into caring about my clothes, especially as a child.
When I was a kid, I asked my mom to take me to an Army Navy Surplus store in Angola, Indiana, where I purchased a pair of military cargo shorts. I then cut them off at the knees and washed them until they frayed enough to make me look like a homeless person.
They were my favorite article of clothing.
I wore the frayed cargo shorts to a friend’s house one day with a ridiculous-looking parrot T-shirt that I swiped from my dad’s dresser. He’d bought it for a Jimmy Buffet concert and never wore it again.
I walked into the kitchen, and my friend’s mom looked me up and down and said, “Your dad is such a classy dresser. What happened to you?”
I was confused, so I shrugged and said, “I dunno.” I really liked the shorts, and I was indifferent to the parrot shirt.
Wick-ed
As an adult, most of my articles of clothing are currently made of some form of wicking material because after living in the Carolinas for 30 of my 48 years, I am, quite frankly, tired of sweating.
I have wicking pants and wicking T-shirts. I even have a wicking dress shirt. Yup, wicking underwear too. It’s glorious. I own four pairs of wicking shorts. They are all the same Target model purchased in two different colors.
My T-shirt collection—normally a strong point in a man’s closet—is pathetic. I think I’m down to maybe five. Why don’t I buy more?
There aren’t enough pages in this newspaper for me to get into my requirements for a T-shirt, but they are lengthy. Let’s just say it’s tough to maintain a T-shirt collection while nurturing an undiagnosed case of severe OCD.
My socks are a national tragedy because Future Man steals them and never returns them, so I went to Target last winter and purchased a 12-pack of the ugliest sweat socks you have ever seen so he wouldn’t take them.
Do I own a suit? I do, but I own a suit like the alcoholic coach from Hoosiers had a suit.
“I got myself a suit right there. I got a wing-dinger. I was married in that suit, there.”
Here’s a random one for you: at times, I have had three grand in Peter Millar golf shirts because I used to run professional golf tournaments, and they gave us seven staff shirts for tournament week. At my peak, I did five tournaments in one year, so yeah… lotta golf shirts for a guy who doesn’t play golf.
Last summer I rolled up on an old guy at Northstone wearing a Meijer LPGA Classic shirt—one of my former events—and rolled down the window to ask him when he’d gone to the tournament.
He had no idea what I was talking about, so I rephrased the question, and then he looked down at the logo and told me his wife bought it for him and he had no idea where it came from.
At that point, I remembered I donated a bunch of old staff shirts to Goodwill, and this gentleman was wearing one of them. So I waved and drove away.
I will regret for the rest of my days not befriending him. What an amazing origin story! We could have become friends because I found him wearing one of my Goodwill shirts in a parking lot. My kinda guy.
Fashion genes
My mom seems to be concerned that I’m going to pass along my inability to dress myself to my children, but I don’t think it’s a valid concern.
After all, my dad wore monogrammed custom dress shirts and fancy golf shirts and sweaters and such, passing along none of his sartorial cares to his eldest son.
The Blonde Bomber seems to be into dressing nicely. She and her friends all go to Birkdale in the same ruffled athletic Lululemon skirt. They look like a tennis team on a shopping trip.
Future Man recently bought some pants, and he wears golf shirts to school on game days. Not exactly George Clooney but not Johnny Depp either, sooo… I think those analogies make sense.
I guess I just don’t understand the point of clothes other than to avoid being arrested for indecent exposure. Which brings us to this.
I have two hoodies that I alternate through most of the winter, but I had to shelve one of them this past spring. Turns out the color matched the sweatshirt of the guy who was exposing himself on the greenway, and I started to get some weird looks while walking my dog.
Things are not good.
It gets worse
Being colorblind doesn’t help the whole situation. In the winter of 2005, I tried to buy myself a pair of brown pants at least five times and came home with olive-colored pants every time.
The summer after high school, I painted houses with one of the guys who went on to create Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I thought about messaging him a few years ago to ask if I could be the subject of an upcoming episode, but I think I might be beyond repair.
Plus, I don’t have any hair, so what would the hair guy do in my episode? Also, I don’t think my wife would let them remodel our house, which I find reasonable.
Absent any plan for help, I think I’m getting worse. Which I fear is all leading down one path. And that path is terrifying. I don’t even want to go there, but we’ve gotten this far, so here it is…
You know what looks amazing? Medical scrubs. My lord, how comfy and airy and amazing they must feel.
How liberating to know you never have to figure out color matching because it’s the norm for the tops and bottoms to be the exact same color.
To be completely honest, I’d own an entire closet of medical scrubs if I could. But I can’t. I just can’t.
Why? Because it would just make it easier for my family to commit me to a mental hospital, so, alas, I haven’t made the leap.
Yet.
Jon Show lives in Robbins Park with his wife, who he calls “The Mother of Dragons.” Their 15-year-old son is “Future Man” and their 11-year-old daughter is “The Blonde Bomber.” Their dog is actually named Lightning.
