It is reasonable for us older people to offer advice – it is the “been there, done that, got burnt” principle. 

One such catch-all piece of wisdom that has been around at least since my high-school graduation is “Make Good Decisions.” It was, of course, wasted on high school graduates then, just as it would be now and for the same reason.  

The only way to recognize a good decision is to make a bad one and find out what happens. Much of what causes regret, looked like a good idea at the time. 

The Nehru jacket comes to mind. Adorned with an amulet, it was a hot fashion item in the late 1960s – for about 15 minutes. It was ridiculous looking. Plus, it had the added advantage of making a lot of people want to kick your butt. 

Guess how I know? I bought the less-expensive Nehru shirt and a cheap amulet. I didn’t even have to wear it out in public to find people who wanted to kick my butt. My older brother, two uncles, a cousin and one of my sisters were all ready to take a swing.  

That was far from the only tragic mistake made in the interests of making myself look interesting and appealing.  

Before it was gray-white, my hair was brown-black, so dark it was hard to be sure of the color. When the Beach Boy surfing thing was groovy, I tried to dye it blonde, resulting in a surreal shade of red-orange, leading to my first skinhead haircut. Another time, after spending haircut money on cigarettes – talk about good decisions – I tried to cut my own. To be honest, it looked a lot like styles of today that people pay a lot of money for, so I guess I could have been considered ahead of my time. 

I had a perm at the same time I had a bushy beard. My driver’s license photo looked like a nose and two eyes peering out of a Brillo pad.  Had a Mohawk in the Army, a flat-top that I tended with Butch Wax, and once just let the hair do whatever it wanted to for a year or so. So far, I have not had a pony-tail. If you see me in one, shoot me.  

I bought possibly the ugliest garment ever made, a polyester Paisely shirt with a collar the size of a hang-glider. There was a pair of wool checkered elephant-bell bottom pants that came up to my armpits and a pair of low-rider embroidered jeans as tight as a leotard, tinted teardrop wire-framed Easy Rider eyeglasses, a white linen leisure suit, a polyester 3-piece pastel suit so shiny it glowed, and the worst of the worst, a pair of pale blue platform clogs that left me hobbling about six inches off the ground.  

I have been writing a memoir, which has caused me to look through a lot of old photos. And, boy, there are some doozies in there, but thankfully not as many as there could be. 

It has made me realize how lucky I was to have lived back when there weren’t so many cameras around, and also before another fashion statement became so popular. I shudder to think of what kind of damage I might have done to myself if getting tattoos had been a thing in my youth. Those aren’t as easy to dispose of as a Nehru shirt. 

Meanwhile, I will pass along some modified sage advice that might have come from my old Commander in Chief, Richard Nixon.  

Make good decisions. Failing that, get rid of the evidence.