Nope, I just can't do it. And the older I get, the more I refuse to acknowledge it. Part of this refusal to acknowledge increasing age is a refusal to dress my age - which is 53 in two days, to be precise.
I guess this line of thought has its origins from my time in the Air Force. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely and thoroughly enjoyed my 23 years in the service and would do it all again at the drop of a hat...but a side effect of spending 23 years in a military uniform, always having to be concerned about how you looked, is that when you don't have to do it anymore you find yourself dressing pretty much any damned way you want and not giving a damn how you looked or what others thought.
Within reason, of course...I've seen retired military folks who REALLY took it to extremes - hair past their shoulders, beards which hadn't seen a razor in years, ratty jeans, ripped t-shirts, things like that. On the flip side of the coin, I've seen plenty of retired military folks who dress and look like they're still in the military - flat top haircuts, epaulet shirts, pressed pants, friction-style belt buckles on webbed canvas belts, and so on.
I like to think that I've landed somewhere in the middle between "reasonable" and "unreasonable." The last time I put on a military uniform was in June of 1998 when I went to my former son in law's commissioning ceremony at Virginia Tech. Once that was over I packed my uniforms away in a trunk, stashed the trunk in my closet, and haven't opened it once since. Decades from now after I'm long gone, hopefully my son will one day open that trunk and take a stroll through his old man's military career, and will smile at the remembrance...but that's a long way off, I hope.
In the mean time, most of the time you can find me clad in my usual attire - boots (either my Ropers or Harley boots), jeans, a biker t-shirt of some sort (usually a Harley shirt), black leather belt with a Harley buckle or Iron Cross buckle on it, and my Robocap. (That's the hat I'm wearing in my profile pic at the top of the page.) If I'm on the bike, which is most of the time, I'll also be wearing my black vest with all the patches on it. In the summertime when I'm not at work or on the bike, I'm wearing sandals, shorts, a tank top (Harley, of course) and a straw cowboy hat. Sometimes in the winter, especially when I'm visiting my father in North Carolina, I'll wear a long-sleeve Western shirt and a black felt Tom Mahan cowboy hat to go with my jeans and cowboy boots. (Side note: no matter what I'm wearing, unless I'm on my way to or from work, I'm always armed. Always.)
As for what I wear to work, I'm pretty lucky in that my company allows me to wear jeans and a t-shirt to work, because as a part of my job as a Loss Prevention Specialist, I have to be able to blend in with the customer base. So my jeans and t-shirts fit right in. After 23 years of working in a uniform all day, this is a godsend, let me tell you! Sure, I have some polo style shirts that I wear every now and then, but not very often. More often than not you'll find me in a Harley garage shirt or a nylon print shirt or two, or one of my two Guyberra shirts which look good and are really comfortable as well.
But the one thing you'll NEVER find me wearing is ANYTHING in pastel. ANY pastel, ANY color - you absolutely WILL NOT find me wearing a pastel - EVER. You will also never see me wearing "Sans-a-Belt" trousers or Velcro-laced tennis shoes. And my wife is under standing orders that if she ever sees me appear out of our bedroom wearing shorts, sandals, and SOCKS, she is to relieve me of whatever pistol I'm carrying and shoot me until the slide locks back - and then reload.
I've always said that age is simply a fact of mind over matter - if you don't mind, it don't matter. That's pretty much the way I feel, and that's pretty much the way I'm living out my life.
And I'm enjoying every second of it!
IHC
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