It's Official : I Am a Grumpy Old Man

In many ways I like to think that I am more contemporary than many people my age. I keep up on current things, like quite a bit of modern music, and can usually find a movie that I enjoy from the sludge that is at the theater on any given weekend.

Sometimes I marvel at how the kids today all have short hair styles, remembering that the freak flag of youth used to be having long hair. I laugh at my middle son wearing his flat brimmed hats ( bad) to wearing them with a tilt ( worse ) to wearing them sideways ( thankfully not yet) and wonder what was wrong with just wearing a hat the correct way.

I taught my oldest son, who is actually quite conventional in most things and so never embraced the whole flat brimmed hat and the like, when he was just little that only catchers and buttheads wore their hat backwards and then asked him if he had a game today.

Even so I get the hat thing, famous people, famous ball players wear their hat that way, whatever I guess it is not the end of the world.

Somehow, somewhere though folks I must have missed the memo on the pants thing. Again my youngest son, who seems to be more susceptible to these trends, appeared a few times in the house with his jeans too low and we put a stop to that. Good God it is horrendous.

So, two or three times this spring, on the streets of Bangor, I have seen something that has left me speechless. I am not often speechless. I have no ability to fathom what I am seeing. My wife and I are seeing grown men, if you consider men in their early twenties grown men,walking with their underwear completely showing, with their pants, shorts, or whatever completely below, hanging on their thighs.

My wife and I look at each other and are incredulous. Someone please explain it to me. I have heard that the whole pants hanging down thing originated as jailhouse language, I do not know if that is true but even where it so why would young suburban boys want to dress like that.

However I have decided something. If to be modern and contemporary I have to chuckle and act not offended at this sort of dress then here and now, today, I acknowledge that I am not young, I am not contemporary, I am, and proudly so, well on my way to being a grumpy old man.

For God Sakes pull up your pants!