School was back in session today, finally, albeit with a two-hour delay to let the last of the below-zero temperatures bleed away before the kids had to be outside waiting for buses. Unsurprisingly, facing a shortened Friday after three days off something like 48% of the student body opted to not bother coming to school, so it was really peaceful around the building today.
I showed up for work today in a button-down grey shirt, sleeves rolled up (I always roll up my sleeves; I despise the feeling of fabric on my lower arms for some reason,) with a blue-and-purple Jerry Garcia tie and a brand-new purple sweater vest. It marked the first time in my life I’d ever deliberately worn a sweater vest, and my last thought after looking in the mirror before going to work was I have never looked more like a middle-aged middle school teacher in my life than I do right now.
I didn’t mean to buy the goddamn sweater vest. It was literally a stupid accident. I was at the fat man store last week sometime buying T-shirts (as it turns out, my policy of buying shirts at the cons I go to has put me in a position where most of my wearable T-shirts are con shirts now, and I needed to reassert the proper solid-color balance) and I saw the sweater on a table on the way out. I liked the color and the subtle pattern and I bought it on a whim, not realizing until I got home and unfolded it to hang up that it was a damn sweater vest. I don’t even know why I dislike sweater vests so much; it’s an irrational prejudice but I still have it.
A sensible person would have just returned the sweater; I’m keeping it out of spite. Against, apparently, myself and my own bad decisions.
And then two different kids over the course of the day compared me to Rick Ross, who, if you don’t know, is the dude in the picture up there, a picture I obtained by Googling “Rick Ross sweater vest”. One might think that that might be a sign that sweater vests are perhaps his thing, but no, it turns out shirtlessness is more his thing, and I will never as long as I live be photographed shirtless, full-body torso tattoos or not. I think the kids probably thought they were making fun of me, but I feel like any day where I walk out of the house thinking I could not possibly look more like a middle-aged middle-school teacher and then get compared to a famous and wealthy rapper is a good day even if the main point of comparison is that we’re both fat and bald and have bushy beards. I’ll take what I can get, dammit.
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