THE AMERICANA AGE: One day, when I was finally becoming old enough to care, my mother came home with a sackful of T-shirts she’d found on sale at Kohl’s and plopped them on the kitchen table. Kohl’s being Kohl’s, they’d cost only a couple of dollars each, and she bought every design they had on the shelf, nearly twenty in total, which would last me the entire year. Yes, this is all well and good, and children in starving countries would be blessed to have parents who brought them home sackfuls of T-shirts they’d bought on sale from Kohl’s. But here’s the thing. This particular sale happened to be in honor of the Fourth of July, so every shirt in my mother’s bountiful Kohl’s sack was a deep shade of either red, white, or blue, all with gaudy American decals on the front—a majestic eagle, an American flag, or some other horrific flourish. And sure, this was midwestern suburbia, where patriotism was plentiful. But there’s a limit to the amount of Americana a thirteen-year-old can display in public before it starts to look like he’s on some type of special government scholarship that requires a constant display of fealty to the state. Fortunately, with puberty’s ascendance, my sweat glands went into overdrive and nearly disintegrated all the armpits. So the joke, really, was on Kohl’s and their cheap T-shirts.

THE CARGO JORTS AGE: I remain convinced that cargo shorts are one of the least flattering, most unbearable items of clothing ever invented. I mean, surely there are better places to keep your fish hooks and tackle gear than a lower thigh pocket. Like a fishing box. Or a garbage can. The point is, cargo shorts are basically just the straight man’s response to purses. Women carry everything they need in a purse, but because masculinity says your penis is too small if you carry your stuff in a bag, some man in medieval times was like, “How about we just build purses right onto these shorts?” And now we have cargo shorts. And the world is terrible because of them.

Of course, I didn’t know this until I found the light some years later in life. And so, I spent most of my high school years on the wrong side of history, wearing cargo shorts almost daily. And not just any cargo shorts. Jean cargo shorts. Cargo jorts. And what did I keep in them? Definitely not my dignity.

I’m proud to say those cargo jorts have been burned alongside everything I ever attempted to buy from Abercrombie & Fitch. I hope they’re burning in hell.