Pappy

We all know Popeye...right? The spinach guzzling, scrappy sailor who has a serious fetish for painfully thin women? Well, did you also know that Popeye has a dad? Ok, that was kind of an obvious question. What I mean is, have you ever seen Popeye's dad?

Poopdeck Pappy was introduced to the Popeye comic strip in the mid 30's and appeared on occasion in the animated cartoons. Like his son, he was an ornery, scrappy version of his beloved son with an obvious addition...a scraggly white beard.

So what does this have to do with me? Well, as I've piled on the years in my never-ending pursuit of old age, I've experimented over the years with varying lengths of beard. While it was kinda cool in my younger days, age has added a distinctively lighter tinge to it. Some might even say it is white in color.

I'm not a vain person so I'm not into dying or coloring or any of the crazy things people do to mask their age. Au naturale baby!

So many of my friends look a lot younger than me (ok...ALL of them!) I also hang around with a lot of comedians. Funny guys. Witty folks with a penchant for the droll. And in their effort to amuse, they came up with a term of endearment for yours truly...you guessed it...Pappy.

Again, not being a vain man, it never really bothered me. But they took so quickly to the name that I started to think, "Am I older than I think?"

Street Child

I'm a musician and I've played in several bands over the years, most notably a New York quartet named "Street Child" back in the late 80s. In those days I had very long hair and dressed pretty much as you might imagine--lots of black t-shirts and jeans.

As age set in, I mentally stayed pretty much the same (my wife keeps me young). Hence my style of dress hasn't really changed in the 20+ years since I played in the band. Still lots of t-shirts, sneakers, and jeans. But I definitely don't look the rocker I once was. My wife is roughly the same age as me but she is often confused for my daughter.

A particularly embarrassing incident occurred in a shoe store. My wife was buying a new pair of boots. And these things were U-G-L-Y ugly! Kind of a cross between Paul Stanley platforms and Aerosoles. Anyway, I gave the typical "you've got to be kidding" look to my wife when a young girl sitting next to my wife, also trying on shoes, leaned over and said, "Those boots are really awesome." My wife flashed me the all-knowing "told ya so" smile and replied to the girl, "I think so too, but he doesn't like them very much." The young girl's response was simply, "What's he, your father?" Rather than answer, my wife simply giggled for about 10 minutes...

But I digress. Had I become Pappy? Essentially, a carbon copy of my younger self, still relatively thin, still dressing pretty much the same, still acting pretty much the same, but sporting a scraggly white beard.

I like to think that I'm starting to get that ZZ Top, Billy Gibbons kinda look. Put a pair of dark sunglasses on me and I definitely start to get that crazy Texan look. Add a hat and, voila! Billy.

Then again, I do smoke a pipe. Hmm...