No fashionista, he's a fashionasty

By Carl Sullenberger: I'm what the fashion world calls an example of how not to dress. Extraordinary timing has allowed me to be about two years behind the entire planet. Look at me and you'll know what went out of style and no one with taste would be caught dead in.

It's been like this since I popped out after my due date 53 years ago. I've been playing catch up ever since.

My first recollection of any particular style I may have had could best be described as Tweedledee meets the Beverly Hillbillies. I have a photograph that is mercifully lost showing me at about 11 with over-sized shorts fashioned from my father's old pants, white socks, and clodhoppers. I was a tad thick in the middle and only needed the beanie to be a clone of the Tweedle Brothers.

The misfortune of growing up in the late 60s and early 70s is that there were two competing movements. The first was that dinosaur called Disco and the other was Haight Ashbury I'm-too-stoned-to-know-better counter-culture. I did both.

My John Travolta days (the young pre-Scientologist, too sexy for his shirt John) included a gold crushed-velvet vest and very pointy shoes worn with shirts with collars Bozo the Clown would find obnoxious. Since I looked like a spazz when I danced, often having to refuse treatment from paramedics, I changed directions and went psychedelic.

Contrary to the visage of the bald old fart you see today, I had a ton of hair. I wore it swooped across my forehead, over the ears, and below the collar. I had bell-bottomed jeans and shirts that looked like someone had eaten crayons and threw them up in my closet. I squeezed into very snug pants that left very little to the imagination and propped eye glasses the size of cereal bowls on my nose. I was hot.

Of course the world had already moved on and I was suddenly a creature of derision and pity. Darn.

At that point in my journey to a well-deserved dirt nap I had other things to worry me like eating and not living in a cardboard box. Stress and a tight budget resulted in a "Night of the Living Dead" period. When the house payment is due, whatever is keeping you a step ahead of a public indecency charge is good enough.

As with all things human, the cycle of life turned, and like the first half of a Republican administration, the economy boomed and I had money again. The problem is I no longer cared what I wore as long as I didn't shiver too much in the winter. I settled into a very long fashion era I'll call my "Al Bundy" period.

Everything about me was conservative and blasé. My style was all the other characters in a find-Waldo picture. I even owned a couple of suits and had ties without naked women or Christmas trees.

Toward the end of this vanilla-style period the new thing was the super baggy pants with your Jockeys showing look. For the first time I was grateful to be too old and too smart (a very rare situation for me) to even consider yanking my pants down to display my briefs. Just the energy it would require praying that my pants didn't hit the pavement would have exhausted me. I tried the backward ball cap look, but I looked like Jim Varney on a bad day.

In my advanced years I have finally found my niche in the world of flash and dazzle. Wilford Brimley Pizzazz is what I'd label it. This style is defined as whatever is comfortable. The back of my jeans have giant folds of excess material, my shirts are large, non-descript, and very snuggly. I wear either tennis shoes (that just showed my advanced age) or Timber Lakes, and I have the same Kelley's Island jacket I bought when my wife would still be seen in public with me.

Maybe I'm finally in the forefront of a time when people just dress to not be bare-bottomed and no one has to worry about whether they can afford to keep up. I see a lot of over the hill types echoing my fashion sense. Of course, all you have to do to believe this is to never go to a high school or junior high.

If you do have to visit one of these houses of competitive clothing exposition, don't be discouraged. We used to be cool, too. We're what they have to look forward to. Scary, huh?