Bling bling. I am not.
When I became aware, around my mid-teenage years, I observed the world to have two kinds of people: those who tailor-made their school uniforms or those who wear the standard-issue, designed for durability and cost effectiveness. That mattered little to me, since soccer did not care what we wore. Those, and ensuing, years permanently ruined my fashion sense.
I acquired suits, dress shoes, and many ties during my working years. Those were always business necessities. I learned to choose conservative colors and patterns. The idea is not to stand out, but to blend in. Besides, wearing penguin suits is asking for trouble in the engineering cliques.
For my own wedding, I received a nice watch as a gift. I wore it for the wedding and promptly put it away. For 30 years, I duly changed the battery and had it maintained, but wore it only very occasionally. It has a leather strap and is not water resistant. I would need to take it off even to wash my hands, let alone shower or swim. My everyday watch is an electronic one with an LCD display. With a rubber strap and water-resistant, this watch is solar-powered, has dual time-zones, atomic calibration, and a built-in compass: but definitely not fashionable. For Kid’s big day, I was told that I needed a piece of man jewelry.
Did you know that a piece of man jewelry can cost an obscene amount of money? I ran out of the jewelry store that during all the previous patronages were completely non-participatory on my part. After intense soul searching, I settled on a nice time-keeping piece from Costco for $200.
Then I learned the term “mansome.” It is a twist of the word handsome, meaning doing whatever women do to themselves: questionable substances applied to the face to achieve questionable result, various techniques applied to hands and feet, trimming of bodily hair to the exact specification, and the application of aromatic liquid to body parts. All at great expense and extremely time consuming.
I am clearly wrong that this old dog has been out of tricks. No more $10 hair-cut. Next time I book a spa session, maybe I will go for the senior citizen discount.