Cancel My Membership

This past weekend was a very mild one here in south Florida. The nights were in the low 60's and the high for Saturday and Sunday was in the mid to low 70's. Now, I'm actually a big fan of 'cold and dreary' (which is a huge motivator for me to get out of south Florida), but weekends like this past one are, for me, very entertaining because of the visual conundrum they present.

You see, you have to remember that south Florida is one giant retirement community and to a majority of the population, anything below 80 degrees is cool and anything below 75 is cold. So it's rather amusing to be someplace where there's a diverse age group (like a mall) and see some people in shorts, a larger group wearing sweaters or jackets and another percentage bundled up like Nanook of the North. However, on a 75 degree day, the largest group, by far, is the sweater and jacket group. That's where the conundrum comes in.

I would say that the average age of the jacket wearing group is 75 years. That means that they were, on average, 53 years old in 1985. So where the heck are they getting all of these "Member's Only" jackets? I mean, even at 53 they were too old to be that cool. I was in high school in 1985 (senior) and I wasn't even that cool and by the following year, only late dorks were wearing them because of inventory reduction sales. For a while, I was convinced (hoping) that this was a fashion faux pas confined to south Florida but, recently, I've noticed a disturbing and, possibly, nefarious trend where certain types of people are wearing what can only be called, "Member's Only Clones" because of their similarities to the real thing. It's almost as if these people are actually members of a secret society whose goal remains shrouded in mystery but hints at effecting a majority of the population. Maybe I'm just being paranoid.