THE RIGHT SHIRT PULLS EVERYTHING TOGETHER

What is the right shirt for the occasion?

As all fashionistas know, it depends on the occasion.

You don’t want to go too over the top as much as you don’t want to look like you could care less.

Try not to channel your inner-Lady Gaga.

This was the right shirt for the No Kings march.

How many others turned up in a fifty year old Army shirt with their name on it?

One guy he had one tucked away somewhere.

Mine hangs in my closet, the first in line.

I gave one to each of my girls to wear since they’re Gillaspies now.

Why is this the right shirt? It’s a birthday shirt for the Army’s 250th.

 

Radical Times Of 2025? Not Exactly 

At last count my public service has included my dad taking me to a JFK speech in Ashland when he was running for President, drinking beer in a Philadelphia tavern near where the Marines were invented, hearing President Ford speak in person on the Fourth of July 1976, going to a Bill Clinton speech in Pioneer Square when he was running, and the No Kings march.

In Tigard.

Not exactly the resume of any kind of activist, but it’s important to get out now and then.

I paused near a bench during the march while my wife found a place up on highway 99.

Two old people stopped. They were retired teachers.

 

Me: I like the crowd. It’s a good turnout.

Teacher: I wish there were more young people.

 

We talked about things while the march passed by with people pushing strollers, people with babies strapped to their chest, parents walking with grade schoolers and middle schoolers from the looks of them.

Looked like plenty of young people to me, but the two teachers were eighty year olds who remember the marches of their youth with a huge presence of college kids and high schoolers coming out against the Vietnam War.

 

Teacher: Back then I had a choice of either wrestling in college or studying harder. If you didn’t carry a GPA above C you could be drafted by the Army. If you dropped out you could get drafted an sent to Vietnam. I wasn’t the best of students, so I applied myself to my studies.

 

This was a Sixties guy.

I’m a Seventies guy, a low GPA dropout with no worries about getting drafted.

That all changed when being a low GPA dropout didn’t carry the same mystique it once did.

 

“You fought The Man?”

No.

“You fought the system?”

No.

“You wanted your freedom?”

No.

 

Low GPA dropouts usually make up a story they can live with other than being lazy, unmotivated, and burning through student loans like they’d never have to pay them back.

Like many, still not enough, I got married at thirty-one and got on the right path.

Student loans? Paid. Debt to the VA? Paid.

Go back to college and finish a degree? What, and lose my badge of courage for dropping out?

It’s not much of a badge, and not much courage, when you turn forty with a wife, kids, and a mortgage.

The only solution was going back to college and getting a degree, to finish what I started, and set an example for the kids like my dad did when he graduated at thirty.

After taking classes in three different decades I shook hands with the dean in Memorial Coliseum and grabbed my U.S. History degree with an emphasis on Oregon History, and beat it.

I like to think of my two year army enlistment as graduate school, although I joined after freshman year.

My education had only just begun.

Who’s the cool guy now?

 

Father’s Day After No Kings

When my kids were young I used to tell them they didn’t have to worry about step-brothers, half-brothers, or kids I thought more of than I thought of them.

I don’t know if I was doing them a service or not since most success stories have obstacles to overcome.

They thought it was kind of stupid to brag about things that wouldn’t happen.

Later they said give it a rest since the real world isn’t on my schedule.

So I did. Besides, I think I might have worn it out.

This happened on Father’s Day in the 90’s:

 

Me: If you could have anyone else for a dad, who would it be.

 

As their bonafide father, the pater familias, I expected at least an honorable mention.

But no.

 

Kids: We want Michael Jordan.

 

Memo to dads: never ask your kids who they’d rather have as a dad than you.

The tools of being a good citizen and being a good parent are closely tied.

Stick with raising your kids instead of farming it out.

Do everything with as much joy and enthusiasm as you can muster.

No one will be a better parent to your kids than you.

What’s the right shirt to wear for the job, for the battle ahead that never stops?

Wear a shirt with history.

A durable shirt with many years left.

Make it a shirt that identifies with the struggle to do things right.

Then put an apron over it because things get messy.

Happy Father’s Day. Don ‘t screw it up. They’ll remember.