I am getting old, and as I look at the trends around me, I am often puzzled.  I work in a public high school.  Therefore, I see myself way on the opposite side of the generation gap from the students.  There are more and more things that I simply cannot identify with in their world.  It is as if we are living on different planets.

Sagging pants are one of these things.  I just don’t get it.  I especially don’t understand how girls can be attracted to boys with their underwear exposed.  These guys waddle like penguins and act real cool as their pants keep sliding down.  They are forever pulling them up to walk and then yanking them down a bit.   I don’t think that they could run if their lives depended on it.  I have even heard that walking in this manner has been known to make hip surgery necessary for young men in their mid-twenties.

The first time I witnessed this phenomena was when I was driving close to home in the wintertime.  It was below zero degrees and a young man’s rear end was out in the elements.  He had a winter jacket, hat and boots and gloves on, but his underwear was the only thing covering his backside.  He had to be freezing.  But “fashion” won out.  I actually couldn’t believe it at the time.  My granddaughter informed me the this was the way guys dressed.  I was flabbergasted.

The thing that surprises me the most is that sagging started more than 25 years ago when my son wore his pants just an inch or so below his waist.  He skateboarded and they wore their pants that way for reasons I didn’t understand then or now.  It looked so uncomfortable.  It’s a mystery to me still.

Tattoos are another thing I just can’t wrap my mind around.  I don’t mean that I can’t appreciate small ones or ones that can be covered if need be.  But I don’t know why so many people insist on covering so much of their bodies with permanent ink.  Even people my age and older are jumping on this bandwagon.

The thing is, even though some of the larger tattoos may have major significance to the person wearing it, they can draw attention away from that same person and who they are because that’s what a tattoo does.  It draws attention. That’s what it’s designed to do.  And it is always there.  You can’t leave home without it.

The ones that confuse me the most are the ones that conflict with each other.  It’s like the tattoos are having a competition to see which one gets noticed the most.  Some people who have tattoos even say that they are addictive.  This, combined with the fact that they are painful and cost lots of money, is why I don’t think I will ever understand this.  I see lots of sagging in the future for these people as they get older.  Sagging of a different kind.

Now to be fair, I must admit that when I was in high school we wore mini skirts and tent dresses. Guys had long hair and sideburns.  There were bell-bottomed pants and paisley galore.  It was not a pretty time in fashion history.  But, it was my time and so I understood it.

I guess getting older makes it harder for me to relate to popular trends because I am not “trying on” new ideas anymore to see if they fit me.  I guess I have come to the “what you see, is what you get” time of my life.  And so, I am bound to find more and more things about the next generations baffling.  And I think that maybe the main thing that I can’t comprehend is how I  got to this point in my life.  Yes indeed.  I think I am in store for many more things I don’t understand before I cease to exist.