[Boomer]

"Pull your pants up. Turn your hat around. Get a job," said P. J. O'Rourke. (I think that line is from his 1996 book Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and a Bad Haircut.)

O'Rourke was a brilliant satirist, genius wit, fellow-Buckeye and fellow boomer. We lost him too soon. Lung cancer. Just reading the titles of his books is fun. And if you do not know anything about him, but would like to, his obit in The New York Times can be found online. (Not everybody gets a NYT obit. You gotta be really famous.)

Have you ever thought about who you would love to invite to a dinner party -- an imaginary dinner party -- where you could pick 4 people, living or dead? Well......P. J. O'Rourke would definitely be invited to my dinner party, along with Dorothy Parker, Mark Twain, and Erma Bombeck. Oh, well, I digress.......now, back to the "offensive" sign.

The sign is not offensive. We are living in a time when a lot of people go around looking for some lameazz reason to take umbrage and point fingers, to get all fired up, and to fire up others.

Sadly though, I think there is an old and serious reason behind that sign. It made me think about a long time ago -- when the high school where I worked changed the dress code -- to make baggy pants a violation. The change had nothing to do with anybody's imitation of their favorite entertainers. The change had everything to do with Columbine. After April 20, 1999, schools suddenly had to look at things differently than we had ever imagined. And who could ever have imagined now........

Boomer