I figure around the year 2051, I will be officially out of middle age and entering the long, unforgiving epoch of my dotage. I hope we still have a Second Amendment then so if I go out in public wearing bun-hugging male model runway shorts, radioactive white legs and plaid knee socks, someone will shoot me.
I saw a chap the other day, a fellow in his twilight. He was pushing a shopping cart and waved me to pass. He was wearing faded pink hiked-up Bermudas, shower sandals and a pair of red plaid socks hiked up above the knees.
They looked like tight-fitting pencil sweaters.
From Scotland.
Some things can’t be unseen.
Like old people legs.
I’m straighter than Interstate 5 past Bakersfield. I can safely evaluate a man’s legs. Actor Chris Hemsworth played Thor. Good legs. Thespian Alexander Skarsgard starred as Tarzan. Decent gams. Heartthrob Ryan Reynolds? Born without legs. He’s only 4-foot-2 and through the miracle of yoga and physical therapy, his size 11 shoes now connect directly to his pelvis. But at least his body double has nice legs.
This older chap in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot was not Cary Grant at 30. Was it illegal for him to display the stems of a dehydrated albino stork in public?
Tragically, no.
Morally appropriate?
Not hardly.
A good fashion statement?
Questionable as a bug-eyed 29-year-old congresswoman from the Bronx.
Dear Mr. Santa Clarita Valley:
¡Que, Lastima! For once and for all, I am NOT deranged nor bug-eyed! I have small pupils. And I don’t mean third-graders. You right wing changos keep portraiting me as dumb. Hey. I GET things. I know about civics. I still have a 1984 hatchback. The guy at the Honda dealership keeps car-shaming me because I stopped putting petroleum in the crankcase because I didn’t want to be dependent on 4-N oil. 4-N. 5-N. Whatever it takes. I used to use Castrol until I found out it made environmental air poopies.
(NOTE TO SELF: See if the oil in oil and vinegar is a pollutant.)
Can’t talk anymore. Depressed. Realized I just gave the world 12 years to live. Feel so bad. So very heavy. If my math is correct, I’ll be dead by the time I’m 30.
Giving the young “Hope To Be Stupid” (¡My campaign slogan!)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Bronx Congressbarrista
P.S. Please support me in my 2024 presidential bid. I’m running on a platform that if elected, I’ll run everybody who votes for me out of the frigging country.
Thank you, for your kind letter to the editor, Ms. Occasional-Cortez. Do accept this 812-quart complimentary barrel of Signal Visine as a token of our appreciation. We will now join our newspaper column live in progress…
I suppose I fret so over the elder fashion bozo because in 11 or 12 epochs, I’m going to be a senior citizen. I do not want to be handcuffed to a walker while dragging behind pipe cleaner legs the color of two coats of Navajo white soft glow semi-gloss, no primer.
I don’t want to show off to the world my legs when I’m 97, let alone any other wind-blown and unmentionable body part.
I don’t want a soft, asteroid-shaped Playdough body nor do I want to wear Dr. Scholl’s Diabetes/Pancho Villa peasant huarache sandals like that daft geezer pushing a shopping cart filled with 319 1.5-ounce past-the-pull-date containers of cottage cheese and pineapple.
And I don’t want to wear plaid socks. With mental institution shower flip-flops.
I don’t want to be an OOTOG.
One Of Those Old Guys.
I don’t want to weigh 84 pounds and still be wearing slacks from when I was a svelte 267 pounds (260 of it testosterone) and could jump out of the gym. I don’t want to disappear into the leg of one pant and have the rest of my britches wrapped around and around and around me (by a divorced and indifferent late-in-life candy-striper with icy hands and low self-esteem) then tied around my waist with 8 inches of rope.
Perhaps that extra voluminous pant will wiggle free. I’ll use it to offer a too-da-loo wave to passing tourists.
What ever happened to elder gentlemen with brushed-back silver hair in ties and dignified frock coats, elegant silver-handled canes and cashmere scarfs? Why are there so many OOTOGs wandering the landscape, looking like poignant clowns in search of Cirque du Soleil?
As of press time, John Boston still fits into his pants. At least he thinks they’re his pants. Special thanks today to the plucky Signal interns who provided verbs and consonants for today’s column and to the City of Santa Clarita for their special Sity Senior Syntax Hotline’s (661-255-6899) outreach editing program.
