The Universal Sign for Moron

[copied from dland]

**In 15 days I will be 50 years old**

Sometimes I think I really am turning into an old curmudgeon, like Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes. Or as my kids would say, I'm turning into an old fart.

Here's the thing today's rant is about. Now, I understand that there are styles and there are fashions, and no one should expect kids -- teenagers -- to look or dress like adults do. I completely endorse the rights of teenagers to look and dress however they want to.

Unless they look like idiots. Or like common thugs or sluts.

The one that really got me for a long time is the baseball caps. This year, students in my high school are banned from wearing caps or any hats in school (except for religious reasons, or with a medical note, which I won't go into now), and I really didn't care if they wore hats or not. It's a style, who cares. But when they wear baseball caps backwards, or worse, sideways, they look like they don't even know that their clothes are on wrong.

When I was a kid (i.e., when dinosaurs roamed the suburbs), wearing a cap sideways was the universal sign that the wearer was a moron. Literally. Anyone and everyone knew that someone with his hat on wrong didn't know how to dress himself, and had somehow gotten lost from the caretaker he had to have to tell him when to inhale and swallow.

Even worse than the caps backward is when they wear those visors on upside down or backwards. And they wonder why they're not getting into Ivy League schools.

And then, my god, the thongs. Listen, girls, these things are called underwear for a reason. They're supposed to be worn UNDER the other clothes that you are WEARing. Seeing someone else's underwear is supposed to be a rare privilege for those near and dear, not for your chemistry teacher (not to mention the 750 teenage boys roaming through the school corridors.)

Not only do the top of the thongs show in the back (because their pants are so incredibly low cut), so many of them are wearing these obscene little items of lingerie under pants that are so snug they look like tattoos. And they're showing three inches of belly between the bottom of the top and the top of the bottom, and no matter what rules the schools make and what rules they enforce, short of requiring big baggy uniforms for all, there just isn't much you can do.

So it's official: I'm an old fart. And I really couldn't care less what they wear or how they look. What I really want to know is how there can be so many people between 12 and 21 who are walking around with absolutely no sense of self-respect or values. Girls think that if they look like sluts they will attract boys, and they will, but what boys are these? Boys think that if they look trendy everyone will think they are cool, but what they don't look like is men with brains; they just look stupid.

It's the universal sign for going to hell in a handbasket. It's just so much easier to see when you've got years and years of perspective.


ENTRY #35