I Used to Dress Myself

Just the other day I had a realization how much I have come to rely on my wife, when I had to ask my daughter if the pants I had matched my shirt.  It struck me then, I used to dress myself…..

In college I was a pretty snappy dresser, well as far as three pair of wranglers and four shirts is considered snappy.  I didn’t have a lot of choice, but I was happy with my limited choices.  You can hardly go wrong with wranglers, everything goes with them!  What others thought of my wardrobe?  I didn’t really care, I was a sharp dressed man and that’s how I choose to remember it!  I was happy with how I looked and that was all that mattered.

I don’t know when it happened; I started out selecting my own wardrobe.  Felicia would make a few pointers every now and then.  But I was in control of my clothing situation.  Over the last 22 years she has selected almost all of my clothes and has made lots of good choices.  I still wear wranglers, but there have been some changes.  It started when Wrangler came out with the Riata dress slacks, she got me one pair…they were black.  Then it was a khaki colored pair, if you had told me 20 years ago that khaki was a color….I’d have just thought you were making stuff up!  Khaki wasn’t even a word!  Then another color and some of those preppy cinch jeans (I had to start wearing those to work, didn’t want them to be the best looking pair in my closet!).   Before long, it was amazing how worldly my closet looked….well if you consider riatas and wranglers amazing.  It was amazing to me anyway.

I recently started a new job and after 22 years of wearing wranglers to work every day, I was told I had to dress business appropriate.  I thought I had been!?!?!?!  After all, my wranglers were starched! 

So we inventoried my closet and bought two more pair of riatas.  Now there are a couple shades of black and khaki, plus one pair of army green ones.  My wife has kept me color coordinated through the years and I never realized it was happening!  All of the sudden I am in a position of not knowing if something matches….I usually ask Felicia before she leaves for work…..to dress me for the day.

So there I was, walking down the hall in our house, asking my daughter if my shirt and slacks matched…..and it hit me….

I used to dress myself….

Maybe I am, and was not back then, such a snappy dresser?  Surely not……maybe I didn’t have a good sense of style back then….nah!  I dressed just like all the cowboys I knew, I was a snappy dresser back then! 

I just don’t have a clue about what goes together now…..