...because I'm not trendy. Blogging is trendy. I know this because Rick Romero did a thing on the evening news that talked about how it was so popular, "and so easy to do."
My wife and I are not trendy, therefore we don't Blog.
I was not trendy in school, either. I was the obnoxious/creepy/pervy geek in school. I dressed to avoid being noticed. My fashion weakness, however, has always been hats. I liked hats. But I could never find one that looked good on me. I usually just looked lurpy. Of course, when you're looking for hats in small-town Idaho, it's hard to find anything but cowboy hats. So, I stuck with baseball caps. They worked. Then I had a favorite baseball cap (that I
really liked!) stolen from my locker. I realize now that it was actually a sign of future trend-setting.
I continued to like hats after high school. While serving my LDS mission, I found a Stetson-brand felt Derby at a thrift store. It didn't have a price tag, so the clerk sold it to me for something like $4. I left it behind one day at church, and never saw it again.
After I started college at Boise State, I developed a habit of finding the hat section of the store (any store that had a hat section was open territory), and just putting on hats for the fun of it. I used to think I wanted a Fedora. Cool people wore Fedoras: Jazz musicians, ecclectics,
avante-garde-ists, Free spirits, Nick Fouch, and Sam Spade. People that I knew I could never truly be, who somehow managed to have that elusive quality of not caring what others thought, and social aplomb in the face of ridicule for being different. Most of the time, I tried on the hats knowing that they weren't going to look good. I did it for the entertainment factor, and desperately grasping on to that slim hope of one day,
one day, finding the perfect hat.
And then it happened... Shortly after moving to Boise, ID for college, I was in a Burlington Coat Factory. As was typical, I found myself migrating towards the hats. I had been there before. I'd seen their hats. I already knew that this place held only amusement in how stupid the hats looked, and how stupid I looked in them. I saw some of those funny-looking hats that certain old men and golfers (especially old golfers) might wear might wear. You know the kind: molded felt, no brim, short bill that blended into the crown tapering down front to the bill. Well, I saw that, and I was in one of those moods. I just
had to see how stupid I was going to look in one of
those! I grabbed a kind of olive drab, khaki-colored one in my size, tugged it on my head, and jumped sideways triumphantly, landing in front of the mirror to enjoy my moment of hilarity. I was stunned. I stood there in shock for a moment. Then I double-checked just to make sure it wasn't some kind of trick of the light or my eyes. Nope. It really was true. I looked good in the hat. No, I mean it! I looked
good. I even asked my brother, Thom, who was with me. He confirmed that I didn't look ridiculous. Well, coming from an older brother, that was confirmation enough for me! I bought it, and walked out of the store with it on my head. No, sir, there will be no need for a bag, thank you very much, my good man. I will be wearing it out. Good day. I said good day, sir. It was like a new pair of sneakers for my head. This was sometime in 1999 or 2000. I can't remember exactly, and I haven't gone back through photos to confirm it, but it's been several years.
Now, we fast forward. I've bought 4, and lost 2 of these hats. One each in the olive color and in black. Thankfully, I can always count on Burlington to have them in stock.
Unfortunately, right now, it's because they became trendy about 2 years ago, and have kind of hung on, ebbing and surging in a way that says they're going to stay around for awhile longer, never being extremely popular, but never really being totally uncool. This sucks. Why? Because I used to be unique because of my hat. Nobody else had a hat like mine. Nobody that wore them out in public on a regular basis. People recognized me for my hat, and recognized my hat as well.
Now that I'm living in California, I see them, or ones like them, way too often. I started seeing them in commercials. The wrong kind of commercials, populated by the trendiest of young hipsters, wearing the "it" clothes, listening to the "it" music, and driving the "it" cars, and doing "it" all, only with the "it" friends. I saw a random guy at The Block of Orange wearing my hat. In black! (my current color choice, thanks to my lovely wife. Hi, honey!) I've seen Britney wearing a hat like mine.
I have vowed not to stop wearing my hat, though. I've found my look, and I'm going to stick with it, even if it means going through a social spectrum that will range from being trendy, to following the trend a little too long, to being the guy who caught on way too late, to being the guy who's going for the neuvo-retro/newer old-school look, to not being noticed again because the trend is so old that no one remembers it as a trend anymore. I can't wait until that happens; yeah, next year will be a good year.
But this is not a blog.
