Do you notice how the cool kids wear their baseball caps on backwards?  Neato.  Groovy, as well.  This is how one can identify the quarterback on the football team or whose daddy is a lawyer in town.  It is a time honored tradition.  Thirty years ago the cool kids often wore their hats on backwards.  Actually, when I think about it, wearing your hat on backward should no longer be cool.  Are short basketball shorts cool?  How about mullets?  Well, mullets are still cool for hockey players.  Regardless, I digress.  I guess wearing your hat on backwards will always be a cool thing for kids to do.

That does not excuse, however, the number of grown men I have noticed wearing their hats on backwards.  You are thirty five, with a wife and three kids.  You aren’t cool.  How can you be when you act like a child yourself?  Middle aged people buy themselves a Mercedes or BMW and own 6000 square foot houses.  That’s how old people do cool.  Maybe they put a lot of gel in their hair, but they definitely do not wear an Under Armour hat on backwards.  Poor form.  Plus, it cuts into the kids time in the sun.

It is kind of like when forty year old women wear tall boots and short skirts.  No.  I don’t care if you look good or not.  That isn’t the point.  You are a member of the PTA and have a Soccer Mom sticker in the back window of your black SUV.  Retain your dignity.

Retain your dignity.  There is a phrase that has been put to mothballs.  I understand that people don’t want to get old.  It’s depressing.  But there is no stopping it.  I just don’t see any reason to lose one’s self respect along the way.  If you are in your late thirties and standing there with your wife watching your ten year old play PeeWee football, I can guarantee there are a couple of seventeen year old kids mocking the hell out of you.  And they should be.

Mocking old people is one of the few things that I remember from my youth.  When I was twelve the word “awesome” became suddenly call.  Everything was awesome.  I lied.  Not everything.  You know what was not awesome.  It was not awesome when somebody’s mom used the word “awesome.”  It was plain sad.  Just as your wearing a ball cap backwards is plain sad.  You aren’t an athlete anymore.  You know how I can tell.  Because the quarterback doesn’t have a receding hairline and a beer belly.  That is what old guys have.

You know, the MO should start mocking old people.  I mean, people who were twenty years older than me when I was 17 are still twenty years older than me.  It is just that they are retired now.

“Look at old man Anderson over there blowing the leaves out of his driveway.  He thinks he is really cool.  What a dork.”

“Did you see Mrs. Wilson at the ballgame.  She had on those jeans with the spangly ass pockets.  Christ, she must be heading toward seventy.  Who in the hell has caramel colored hair?  That style is like five years behind the times.  She probably still listens to Journey.”

I feel much better now.  Maybe I should grow my mullet back out.  After all, why should hair in the back of my head be punished because the hair in the front is falling out?  That is cutting off my hair to spite, well, my hair.  Eh.  Everything isn’t Shakespeare, you know.

I had something else I was going to write, but I’m starting to get tired now.  Time for a little tea and some reading.  At least I don’t need cheaters yet, like that stupid, old man across the creek.

That chubby little bastard lives to putter around his yard.  I’m never going to be like that guy.  I’ll put money on it right now.

Where’s my hat?