My Top 5 Embarrassing Fashion Mistakes and Years I Made Them

Look, we all had them. BIG mistakes. Though, sadly I fear I had them worst than most - especially as a smalltown kid from the gentile plains of Wisconsin with a minority index of 4%. But I learned from it, and that's the key: to learn from those mistakes or frankly, just ignore fashion completely. But it was harder as a kid. Our smarts were attributes of scorn, not weapons against the dumb. And the sad reality is that fashion was a defining social symbol. So in the spirit of coming clean and accepting adulthood, I offer you, my friends, a breakdown of the bullshit I succumbed to...

1. Cross Colours (1992-93) - You know, if I could claim I was wearing this stuff because I was against Apartheid that would have been one thing, but that wasn't it. Looking back on it, I got my first pair of Cross Colours jeans - a fairly expensive brand for a 7th grader considering my parents wouldn't spring for Girbaud - shortly after getting into Naughty by Nature, Ice Cube and yeah unfortunately, Kris Kross. I never wore them backward, but even the sad spectrum of my hip-hop taste shows I was turned around enough without the pants. I even had a pair that were candy striped with thick green and white bands. Cross Colours was one of the first brands I was into. And they still make this shit. It's even more embarrassing than ever.

2. Oakley Razors (1992-94) - I was talking with a lady just last night about these, trying to say I was done wearing them by the end of 7th grade, but it was a lie. And a bad one. She outed me in less than 10 seconds. I wore them into 8th grade. So sad. But sadder still is that they remain featured on Oakley's website, though they are no longer available. As if they're some kind of vintage prize, a treasured part of their history. I don't go waving my Jose Canseco rookie cards around like they mean anything, no need for Oakley to do the equivalent. It was a mistake for me at that early age. And its a bigger one to pay homage to your own product like that. This is the kind of shit that Danny McBride wears in East Bound and Down. I bet someone somewhere is selling them in a package deal with one of those hats with the built in ponytails. Fuck. That was a bad one.

3. Kikwear (2000) - I was WAY too old for this stuff, but I was on drugs. It's true. Which with all the drooling and eye-popping bizarro looks is like willingly time-traveling back to the first 18 months of life without your body changing... except for all the sweating. When I started taking Ecstasy, I started wearing the clothes that went along with it. When I stopped taking the drugs a short while later, I hid the clothes. It's amazing to me that there is a mind control drug so powerful that it can create an entire culture of people in huge pants and tech vests. Does everyone that takes Ecstasy wear this shit? No. And I'm still unsure how it happened to me. Just thinking about it, I need an inhaler... preferably one unlined with Vix nasal balm.

4. The "Biff" Hairdo (Intermittently, 1990-1993) - Otherwise known to people as a skater's cut from the 90s (picture unavailable), the cut essentially shaved your head everywhere but for a mass of length that hung to one side covering half your face and half of what had been shaved. It gave the impression that you didn't care, especially when you returned questions with a blank stare, but the honest truth was that from 5th grade through 8th grade I didn't even know what Libertarianism was or Quantum Physics for that matter. Somewhere there are some Halloween pictures from 4th grade of me as a skater tooling around grade school, and somehow my parents never noticed when the costume became a fashion statement, in various incarnations, for the next four years. Thanks Mom. Good looking out.

5. Dyed Orange Hair (1995-1997) - Yeah, those were the nomad years of high school. I was "experimenting"... with the same awful hair coloring, over and over... Jesus, what a disappointment I was to Jesus. At one point, my brilliant plan was to try to go grey, which would have been awesome, as in my current state of balding my body's deterioration is racing to see if I can get to salt & pepper before there is nothing left to season. But every time I tried for it, I ended up a strange shade of pink - like a salmon or barf color. The bright side was that my mother, observing the consistent and significant folly I managed through these trials, decided she'd just let her hair go whatever color it pleased. I was always the guinea pig of the family.

So, yeah. There it is. A blind list of 5 unforgettable embarrassments... To be sure, there are countless others, but if you remember them - and remember them well enough to spew them forth from memory in between fits of mocking laughter - give me a day or so to feel as though I got away with this before you commence the onslaught. That way it'll hurt more. And you'll feel twice as fulfilled... You fucking bully.