How do I Stack Up for the Summer?

Given that it will probably be summer before this month of June is over, Georgea Kovanis from the Detroit Free Press has published a list of things that men ought not to wear if we want dates.  Of course I’ve been married for 30 years and my wife is pleased with any date she can get with me, but how do I measure up to Ms. Kovanis’ standards?

The first on her list is cargo shorts.  I think I may still have a few of those.  But I have so much stuff to carry with me that my wife decided to get me a purse, rendering cargo shorts unnecessary for me.  There are certain things that I’ve learned the hard way to take out of the purse if I’m going to park at the beach, but the purse works quite well.

I wonder, however, whether she has an opinion about jeans shorts, or ‘jorts’?  I have none of them, but I have a close acquaintance of age 29 who wears them most of the time, and it is a fact that he has never been on a date in his entire life!  Whether the jorts are to blame for that, I doubt.

Second, flip flops and sandals.  I don’t wear flip flops because if I do I bang my poor toes against chair legs and table legs and the pain, I assure you, is exquisite.  So I wear Keen Arroyo sandals.  [I have my jorts’ wearing friend to thank for these!]  These not only protect your toes.  They have a panel across the back end that help keep my arch supports in.  When I wear sandals that don’t have that panel, my arch supports slip out.  I do have several pairs of boat-type shoes, but they are not good for walking any distance.

Third, muscle shirts or tank tops.  I don’t believe in those either.  If I’m going to cover my belly, I don’t feel like exposing my armpits.  And if I have to be outside a long time in warm weather, I don’t even prefer T-shirts, I’d rather wear lightweight, long sleeve shirts that are button up and don’t need to be pulled over the head.

Fourth, backward sunglasses or backward baseball caps.  I’ve never seen backward sunglasses.  I have a theory about the backward baseball cap though, which was such a mark of the generation now between ages 35 and 53.  I think it originated in a pseudo-Muslim community of the kind we used to have in America [Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam] when we didn’t have hardly any real Muslims.  Anyhow, when they prayed, these pseudo Muslims had to knock their forehead on the ground.  [Note:  Real Muslims do the same.]  And hats with brims did not lend themselves to this particular spiritual exercise.  So these people turned their baseball caps around to show that they worshiped properly.  And thereby hangs a tale.  Anyhow, it’s hard to find baseball caps that will stay on my 8¼ size head turned either way.  So I’ve collected broad brimmed, 8¼ Tilley hats with a strap. They serve the purpose of hats well enough.

Athletic shorts as casual wear.  I agree.  Workout shorts are for workouts.

Dull, dingy, formerly white, T-shirts.  Ms. Kovanis approves of white T shirts bleached to practically a Transfiguration degree.  My personal T-shirts are black or in bright colors.

So I think I do pretty well on her list; not perfectly though.  No one is going to pry my Keen Arroyos away from me.

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