Popular Trends

Today's Friday Five was some slaw, and I'm not going to waste my time, except with this one question:

.5. What popular trend baffles you?

This thing with the baseball caps. Where people wear their hat so that it's worn so that it's about to fall off the head, with the bill facing at an odd angle, usually facing off to the right or the left at about a 45 degree angle.

In my mind, there are two ways to wear a baseball cap:

1.) The correct way, with bill forward.

2.) Inside out, when your team is behind and they need inspiration for a big inning.

And I can even accept the thing where it's turn around backwards. I'm desensitized. I've seen it so much I don't even notice it. Personally, I'll only wear my cap backwards in public if I'm playing catcher or I'm needing to argue with the umpire. But enough people wear their baseball caps that way that I'm not going to argue. I wish somebody could describe the function.

There was a guy I worked with once who argued that wearing his cap backwards kept the sun off the back of his neck. I wondered, but didn't ask: What good it was if the sun's off your neck, if it's shining directly into your eyes?

And I also recognize that if this cap askew trend continues into the future, I'll likewise become desensitized to that, too. But that will take longer. Because it looks dumber.

But I digress on this point.

The cap askew thing doesn't bother me a lot. But it does make me wonder.

Why wear your cap so that the slightest wind can grab it and blow it away?

Why do you have the bill over your ear? Does it signify something? Is it some sort of 21st century unspoken language that I've not been clued in on?

Does it signify that you're either so much of a party person or a stoner that you're so tired or out of it that you can't even turn your hat forward?

Or is it a minor rebellion, where only normal people wear their hats forward?

I won't point out that I see more people with hats turned sideways. Even on the campus.

And I guess that's part of what's bothering me. The number of people on the college campus right across the street I see wearing their hats askew.

I want to knock them over. Straighten their hats, and say: You're in COLLEGE! You're Vaguely an ADULT! You should at least be able to give up the trappings of popular culture's definition of how to wear a baseball cap!

And then I'd also steal their money, while I'm there.

Like I said, it's a little thing. I don't spend many of my nights up awake in the throes of torment wondering about this.

But it does get me to wondering, sometimes.