Current and Recurrent Trends

My life is so chaotic right now, I have a hard time figuring out where I am and what I’m doing. Cultural reference points aren’t helping, either. Yesterday I saw someone in a huge Afro. Something in my mind slid sideways, and for a second, I felt as if I were back in the 1970s. I didn’t find out until today that Afros are back in style. (As you can see, I don’t exactly keep up with current and recurrent trends.)

At the grocery store today, the guy standing in front of me was wearing his pants down below his buttocks. So not an attractive look! I never expected the droopy drawers trend to last so many decades, but there he was. Even worse, he was very tall, his waist about my eye level. He alternated hitching his pants up and pulling them down so that they were always binding his legs together. He was wearing a heavy coat that ended at his thighs (despite it being 100 degrees today) and I thanked my lucky stars that he never raised his arms.

The guy behind me had Ubangi ears. (I’m sorry if this is a racial slur. I don’t intend it as such, but my only experience with earlobes that hang down to one’s shoulders is from National Geographic magazines that were already old when I was young.) I can’t even begin to connect such a trend to a decade, though I have periodically seen such “decorations” during the past ten years.

I drove back to the house with my car full of groceries for other people (somehow I forget to buy stuff for me. It’s a wonder I’m not wasting away, but I am far from being Twiggy-esque). I could see that the couple in the decades-old car in front of me was smoking, their arms snaking out of the windows at frequent intervals, their fingers flicking like forked tongues.

It would be interesting to think that all these people have slipped into our current time, visiting, perhaps, or simply taking in the sights. But more probably the problem is me. I’m out of step and getting very crotchety.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Tagged: Afro, cultural reference points, droopy drawers, long ear lobes, National Geographic