Heart and Mind

Old Sneakers, Old Clothes, and a Story About My Leather Jacket

In my twenties, I noticed something interesting. I was starting to have a large backlog of old sneakers. When I'd wear out my regular sneakers—the ones I tend to wear daily or close to it—I would buy new ones and I'd hold onto the old ones with the thought that I'd use them for mowing the lawn or other dirty tasks. And I did use them for mowing the lawn and such, but I started having a lot of sneakers floating around that had been earmarked for that kind of use.

Now this had never happened when I was growing up because I was...well...growing. The shelf life of any sneaker was limited to a year or so because I'd be in a different size. Kids are forced to buy new clothes.

This brings up a geeky dilemma, because, in fact, the opposite is also true, which is that adults—who have stopped growing—don't usually need to buy new clothes (except for perhaps larger waist bands in their jeans, but that's not even true of everybody). So we can get pretty darn unfashionable because our clothes will go out of style and we might not stop wearing them on account of the fact that they still fit.

I think I had this problem to a degree in the mid-nineties, and I have to be aware of this still today. I'm not style-conscious enough to be paying attention and I don't really care, but I do care a little bit because... well, let's face it... it's cool not to be a slave to fashion, but you don't want to be the dude wearing the polyester leisure suit, either. A conscious, non-trendy, personal sense of individualistic style is cool, but simply looking outdated because the world has passed you by and left you ignorant to what you look like is not so much.

I think about this when I think about my leather jacket. It is really getting old, but I still wear it. I ask my wife about it, saying, "You know, this jacket is fifteen years old. Are you sure it is still OK?" My fear is that I unknowingly look like the guy wearing the "Member's Only" jacket or something (which brings to mind the line in Shallow Hal directed at the George Constanza character, "What are you, like, the last member?"). My wife tells me that it's OK, saying, "It's kind of a basic leather jacket, so it's a pretty timeless sort of look." I hope she's right.

I got that jacket in December of 1993. It was our second Christmas together and Sue was planning on getting me a leather jacket. I debated on whether I should get the biker-style one or the more conservative-looking one. On the one hand, I was playing in bands and still was young enough to sort of fancy myself a bit rebellious and, for that reason, I was thinking the biker-style one was in order. On the other hand, though, I was also twenty-two, just graduated from college, and pretty much had come to terms with the fact that I am not a guy with a "biker" sort of attitude and perhaps not so rebellious after all.

Funny thing is, it came down to price. The biker one was cheaper and she/we didn't have the money back in those days to spend lavishly on gifts for each other. The fact that it was $100 instead of $150 was kind of substantial back then when it came to gift giving. So, since it was a toss up anyway, she went with the more economical one. When I got it, we talked about it, and although I liked it, it was a little small on me. So seeing as how we had to make an exchange anyway, I made an offer to her to let me pay the extra $50 and lets return it for the one without the big lapels and chains. So we got a more basic looking leather jacket. I figured it would be more accessible to my needs as I aged in a post-college world. Still, I had no idea how true that would be.

I wore it today. I will wear it tomorrow. I wear it all winter-long, every winter. It seems unbelievable to me that I am still wearing it all these years later. I could never have imagined that the discussion we had about returning the biker-jacket would have such far reaching effects and that I'd be discussing things related to my life at 36 and all that is associated with it now.

posted by Steve @ 11:00 PM