Just to establish a fact to which my children would certainly and vehemently attest, I am not a trend setter.
I do not know and have for some time not known what is fashionable and I am certainly in no position to impact it. Owing to my upbringing and limited personal taste, my sartorial choices tend to swing between “looks like he’s ready to play 18 holes of golf” and “if you put military insignia on that, it would make a dandy uniform.”
I am so not an “influencer” that I (A) don’t really know what an “influencer” is and (B) still don’t really know how or why someone should get paid for being one. Is there an election involved? Where does one go to get a job application for that, and if one decides not to be one any longer, do other potential employers accept “influencer” on a resume?
Now I’m fairly convinced my lack of trend setter/influencer status is not necessarily (or at all) a bad thing. I mean, there are some rather unfortunate pictures of me with leisure suits and facial hair (sometimes, most problematically, at the same time).
Come across a high school shot of yourself that you just haven’t yet had a chance to burn — in a forest green leisure suit, complete with a crushed velour green bow tie — and you begin to understand the old saying that he who hesitates is sometimes saved the embarrassment.
A note: Just for fun I searched for “Leisure Suits” online, and one of the most frequently asked questions was “why did Leisure Suits go out of style?” Which is right up there with asking “Is hitting yourself in the head repeatedly with a hammer a bad idea?” The answer is so obvious the question really doesn’t need to be asked.
Now that we’ve firmly established that I had terrible clothing taste at time when, apparently all of us had terrible clothing taste (I mean, leisure suits were quite popular, to our eternal shame) and that I’ve learned from that lesson and moved on to a life devoid of influence or at least me as an influencer, I do want to observe that, in one area at least, I am well ahead of the trend.
I was an early adopter of watching television with the closed captions on.
You laugh (hopefully loud enough for me to hear), but according to a recent study, four of five respondents who are between the ages of 19 and 25 say they watch TV with the captions on all or most of the time.
And since I’ve been doing this for years, I’m ahead of the curve. For all the wrong reasons.
Let me qualify that. I watch TV with the captions on because I don’t hear very well, even with my hearing aids. Also, the Lovely Mrs. Smith and I have a weakness for moody, atmosphere-heavy detective shows from the UK. And since residents of the UK speak an only slightly familiar version of English in accents as thick as London Fog (the weather, not the drink or jacket), watching without captions would make my wildly incorrect guesses as to who committed the murder(s) in question even less accurate than they usually are.
That would be the “right” reason (I mean, that’s what they’re there for: to help people who can’t hear understand what’s going on). But apparently we don’t have a worldwide wave of hearing impairment. Or we might, but it also might be because the people in our lives between the ages of 19 and 25 just don’t pay attention like they ought to!
Actually, it seems people are using captions not because they can’t hear but because they want to watch TV and read their cellphones at the same time. A level of dexterity or multi-tasking I’m not sure I’d be able to master, but, hey, hats off for combining two time-wasters, thereby saving … time, I guess?
All this while I thought the first casualty of modern TV production was lighting (does every TV show take place at night or in a castle with no windows or both?) and the second was discernible dialogue. Now I know closed captions are a trend, and I’m ahead of it.
Perhaps I’ve been selling my skills as an influencer short. Maybe I can see what others will see before they see it.
So … bright colors, typically not found in nature. That’s really best for leisure suits. And the longer the collar, the better. You’re welcome.
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Gary Smith is a recovering journalist living in Rogers.