Dressed to thrill

I am getting older, which I guess beats the alternative, but I can’t say I’m enjoying it all that much.

I guess with age comes wisdom, but then your memory gets so bad that you forget all this great stuff that you’re supposed to know. So what good does it do you? I’m only 44, but many days I feel like I’m only one step away from buying a metal detector, wearing black socks with Bermuda shorts and yelling at neighborhood kids to stay out of my yard.

There is one thing I admire about old guys, though, and that’s their “I don’t give a crap” attitude when it comes to what they wear. So what if it looks stupid? At some point, it appears their wives just give up trying to tell them what to wear. It’s not worth the fight anymore.

It is liberating to stop caring about what you wear, and what people think about you. I haven’t quite abandoned all of my fashion sensibilities just yet, but I have once again embraced pajamas.

You know, you wear pajamas when you’re a kid, then at some point you figure you’re too old to wear them anymore, so you stop. And then one day, you’re old enough to wear them again. In between, we sleep in boxers and T-shirts and occasionally, in our younger, wilder days, our clothes. You never feel good when you wake up still wearing your shoes. Nothing good has happened that night.

My dad is a big pajama-wearer. This is probably because I gave him pajamas for Christmas for about 25 straight years. I’d ask my mom what they wanted, and she’d tell me to get him some pajamas, and just get her some bedroom shoes. And don’t pay too much for them. K-mart has some nice ones for $10.

I only wear the pajama pants. Usually for Christmas, or maybe Father’s Day, the kids get me some nice new ones. I have quite the variety – I have Atlanta Braves pajama pants, Georgia Bulldog pajama pants, “Caddyshack” pajama pants, and even a special Valentine’s pair with hearts on them. I am one suave dude.

Dads often get unusual boxer shorts as a present, too. I have a pair with SpongeBob SquarePants on them. I have some fancy green ones covered with shamrocks, and a pair with zebras on them. But you have to be careful when you wear such, um, unusual underwear.

I found this out one day when I went to the gym where I work and was getting ready to work out. I was standing in front of the locker, about to change into my running shorts, and then I remembered that there had only been one clean pair of boxers in the underwear drawer that morning – a pair that featured Scooby Doo in a Santa’s hat. There was a picture of his tail in the back, and the words “Berry Brismas.”

Rut-roh.

Well, I couldn’t be seen in the locker room wearing such a thing. Sure, the droopy old men love to walk around in there butt-nekkid with stuff flapping all over the place, but I haven’t quite reached that level of “to hell with everybody else” yet. So I just kind of milled around the locker room for a while, got a drink of water, used the bathroom, and when the coast was finally clear, I changed clothes faster than Clark Kent in a phone booth.

I wonder if they make Scooby-Doo pajama pants? If so, I have something to look forward to this Christmas!