Jackass Shorts

I’m beginning to get feedback on the book, and it has been wonderful: moving and touching. But my friend Moe Collins’ feedback cracked me up. She laughed at one of the lines in the book — the same line that got a laugh when I did a brief reading not long ago. Here it is, in the context of the interdependence Jeff and I share in our marriage:

He’s dependent on me, too. In addition to providing him the intimacy and deep connection that a good marriage affords, I help him with his wardrobe, saving him the embarrassment of going out in public looking like a jackass.

I’m not the kind of wife who dresses her husband, and I rarely shop for him. I might remind him he needs new underwear, or comment on the selections he is making when he places a catalog order. Mainly, my wardrobe oversight consists of telling him whether what he’s wearing looks okay before we go out – if the shirt matches the pants, if he’s overdoing it with a jacket, etc.

The reason Moe laughed, though, is because not only did I buy the shorts (pictured) for Jeff, I encouraged him to wear them. I tried to explain to him that he could pull the look off if he wore a t-shirt or something with them, and avoided anything on top that would make him look too much like Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack. (RIP, Harold Ramis.)

But Moe thinks the shorts are funny. She laughed because she thinks that I purposely encouraged him to look like a jackass in public. I think Moe is overreacting, and actually think Jeff looks great in these shorts. Perhaps she laughed because the first time she saw them on him, we all went to the Celeron RibFest together. I honestly didn’t know it was “biker night.” We saw some sights, for sure – tattoos, mullets, over-exposed flesh, and way too much flesh, period. But Jeff was definitely the only jackass wearing plaid shorts.

• ← Sundogs
• No Plan B →