Don’t know what a curmudgeon is? Google it.
Since common sense is apparently not so common any more, it behooves us wacky, narrow-minded, old-timey, out-of-sync with society, crusty curmudgeons to step in now and then to restore a reminder of sanity, civility and good old respect for others. We just have to vent now and then or our rapidly balding heads will explode.
• GIRLS: If you are confused about what is or is not proper and/or modest clothing appropriate for public, let an old guy suggest a rule of thumb: if you are wearing something that demands special underwear to avoid showing straps, lines or the like, let me gently suggest that the item of clothing is likely to be too tight, too short, too low-cut, or generally too revealing for daily wear in public. Change clothes. While I am on the topic, every girl needs one good, brutally honest friend. When you ask “How do I look in this?” your friends often say “Fine” when they mean, “Holy cow, girl, that is so slutty looking I would never wear it in public, but hey…”
• GUYS: Grow up. Man up. If you are still wearing your baseball cap rakishly backward and those baggy shorts with the crotch approaching your knee-caps at age forty, you don’t look cool. You look desperate and ridiculous. Grow up… man up. Get you some adult clothing and an adult attitude to go with it. Gangsta culture is, frankly, pretty pathetic, and those who have wives and kids and 8 to 5 jobs but are wanna-be gangstas are the most pathetic. The idiots perpetuating that image are multi-millionaire businessmen who dress in $8,000 Armani suits and fly Learjets, while they laugh all the way to bank at middle-class white boys emulating fantasy music videos.
• EVERYBODY: If you really think that you can say anything you want, any time you want, in any place you want, you are an idiot. Really? You believe that? Tell you what: go stand on a street corner in Harlem and yell the “N” word a few times… after all, only narrow-minded, judgmental, so-called “Christians” would ever dare point out that perhaps you should temper your tongue. (No, wait… maybe that was the Book of James…) Memo to middle school students and those whose maturing process arrested at that stage: it is never appropriate to use the “F” word (OR the “N” word) in public discourse. Never. The television networks, not exactly bastions of conservative Christianity, censor language for a reason; the FCC fines broadcasters for the use of language deemed obscene and offensive. So, if you are really so clueless that you want to assert yourself by defying the accepted conventions of society and using locker-room language in public, please don’t whine and cry like a little girl when people call you on it. We’ll call you a wambulance.
