Words from WW Blog

I didn’t know. Somewhere along my journey I hadn’t been informed about how to wear a polo shirt. I suppose I could blame it on the fact that I have never subscribed to GQ magazine or stopped to look at the picture posters in the men’s sections of Penney’s, Target, or Dilliard’s. For several years of my life the wardrobe selections I chose from had mostly come from the Last Chance store of Dilliard’s located in Phoenix. Last Chance is the gathering spot for all the returned, and looking suspiciously used, merchandise the company receives.

So, the eighth grade student was simply trying to educate me on one of the missing links of my lifelong learning. The shirttails of polo shirts, he informed me, were not to be tucked into my pants. They were to be worn loose.

“Oh,” was my initial response.

“Yes, hanging out. Tucking your shirt in looks…” He paused considering what descriptive term he would end the sentence with. “…not cool!”

“Not cool?”

“Old, weird, nerdy,” he added. This from a student who is already taking calculus at the high school located next to our middle school.

“But I’ve always tucked my shirt in!” I exclaimed, sounding like a courtroom defendant.

“Yes, well…”

“I’d feel almost undressed with my shirttail hanging out. And besides, this is coming from a generation that thinks sagging is a fashion style.”

“You look a little too much charter-schoolish with it tucked into your pants.”

“What about button-down shirts? Those should be tucked in, right?”

“Not really.”

I did a quick review of the fashion warnings of my lifetime. There was the time I wore jeans that were too short and was teased for having my Noah jeans on. And there was the time I wore white socks with loafers…dumb-looking! And black socks with tennis shoes in my 8th grade basketball team picture, the only kid who had a different colored sock on besides white! And there time I wore an out-of-style sportcoat for a couple of years for Sunday church services before someone told me it should be given to our kids whenever they wanted to play “dress-up”!

But the only times I’ve worn my shirttail out was when it was too small and short to tuck in. And now a straight-A 8th grader has given me the news that I stand out like a sore thumb.

So I went into the staff restroom and untucked it and felt like students were looking at me even more than they had evidently been looking at me. At the end of the next class I went back into the restroom and tucked it back in…and felt normal again!

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This entry was posted on February 13, 2022 at 3:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.