It's About To Get A Lot Harder To Accidentally Wash Chap-Stick with Your Laundry

First of all, I know there are lots of super important things going on right now like the beginning of a presidential election cycle and something about Iran probably, and I am paying attention to those very serious things, I assure you. At least to the extent that they are covered by Bad Lip Reading videos.

That said, please come with me on this: I'm not sure what the problem with cargo shorts is, but apparently I'm not allowed to wear them anymore without running the risk of being ridiculed as an out-of-touch old person. Is this it? Is this the tipping point where I turn my back on social expectation and retreat to the bubble of the fashion choice I was comfortable with once and let the rest of the world rush past me? It's the Jorts Crisis of 1999 all over again, man. I happens to everyone eventually, I guess. The moment of decision I mean. The failure itself isn't inevitable. The people who opt out of turning into that particular swerve, though, they REALLY stand out.

There's still one middle aged woman at my work who insists on occasionally still getting a perm, for example. Are cargo shorts the 2000s male equivalent of that? I just want a pocket to put my wallet in on the side of one leg so I don't have to sit on it while driving. And for this, I should become a fashion pariah? I think that's how it happens though: comfort. Either emotional* or physical. Sometimes popular culture relevance requires painful sacrifice of baseline analgesia, human dignity or both. Don't think it's that complicated? OK, how do you explain fuckers still running around wearing Crocs?

I already got rid of the Ben-Affleck-in-Chasing-Amy goatee... OK, just like three years ago, but still, evidence that I'm willing to let things go in order to adapt to my changing surroundings. And it's not like I don't understand that the cargo shorts look has been largely co-opted and thus primarily associated with old-ass dads, fair enough. And yes, it doesn't take all that much cargo in the actual cargo pockets to balloon that shit into what can only be described as culottes, or even indistinguishable from your average skorts. Those reasonable objections aside, I knew it couldn't last forever. The unavoidable choice is, at long last, upon us. We are mortals after all, driven by nothing if not the awareness of the impermanence of all, ourselves not least. But dag, man, I dug that goatee. Every time you give, they turn around and ask for more...

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*Because the choice is evocative of a time precisely when you were fashion current and a person of unrestrainable sexual potency OR because there's nothing too horrible for human beings to become used to and therefore emotionally dependent upon. Like heroin. And perms.