Cammies

Age 9: decide to wear "army clothes" whenever possible.

Age 13: join cadet group: wear suckass fatigues. Plot to improve situation.

Age 16: continue to wear various suckass green fatigues b/c cargo pants uniforms unavailable. Become familiar with genuine tigerstripe cammies my friend Brian has somehow acquired.

Age 18: spend entire life savings on crummy post-Vietname War commercial tigerstripe fatigues: 40 bucks.

Age 20: get groovy German cammies, arcane Desert Night cammies, wear all over Europe. Tell GF that I have decided to try to acquire every camouflage pattern in the world. She replies that I would then have exactly 2 patterns. 

Age 24 or so: decide to finally get serious about camo. Cover office/guest room with camo jackets on cardboard to display their pattern, make camo director’s chair seats. Mix camo jacets with jeans.

Age 30 or so: transition from camo jackets to camo pants, mix with plaid shirts [Pendletons!] Focus on few, cool patterns.

Age 40 or so: get multiple patterns in order to ease wear on few patterns, extend usefulness.

Age 50 or so: discover that exotic patterned fabric is much easier to find than exotic patterned pants that fit. Begin making pants. Start a Facebook page called Bad Camo, chronicling camo that is silly, stupid, and fascinating.

Age 55 or so: reach point that I can go an entire summer off from the school year wearing a different pattern each day.

Age 60 or so: realize that by any objective metric, I have far too many pairs of camo pants.

Age 62: realize that I have be a much more stylish fucker wearing non-camouflage pants. The too much camo remains.