The other day, a good friend of mine asks me, "Do you twitter?" Do I what? Twitter? The latest Silicon Valley invented verb. I took a quick look at twitter.com, got a glimpse of the Hello Kitty style bubble letters and shut it down. I'm not getting sucked in to another 'networking' site. Thanks to the online networking enthusiasm of my friends (you know who you are), I have already received invitations to sign up with more websites than I can remember at this point.
And what's worse than cutesy bubble fonts and countless forgotten username/password combinations? It's the Abercrombie & Fitch Slap upside the head reminding me I'm too old for this crap. If you don't know what an Abercrombie and Fitch Slap is, you are not alone, so don't worry. The Fitch Slap is my baby and you just witnessed its birth right here, right now. I’ll explain.
The Fitch Slap is an experience I believe shared by a specific demographic, aged about 26 to 30 years old. Until we came along, Abercrombie & Fitch was just a bankrupt sporting goods store selling fishing poles and watches for lame Father’s Day gifts. Today’s quarter-lifers revived Abercrombie in the 90's. We were there for the gay themed catalog controversies, offensive t-shirts and scantily clad eye candy clerks. Time and time again, we'd enter those front doors leading to the intentionally rumpled plaid shirts, perfectly tattered frat boy caps and familiar scent of overpriced teen aftershave. And then one day, we walked in and...Whack! Fitch Slap.
You stare at the clerks who once seemed just like you, and wonder, when did I get so old? Were the shirts always that wrinkled? And, will my iron be able to get that out before work on Monday? The subtle, 'what’s up' nod you used to get from the shirt folder is now replaced with overly polite questions that all end with ma’am and sound like nails on a chalkboard. And that familiar aftershave scent quickly becomes better described as a stench turning your stomach against you. In need of some damage control, you take a quick lap around the store to prove you are NOT shopping for your daughter, pretending to be slightly interested in a pair of jeans that no amount of Vaseline could help you squeeze into and fasten. With a sigh of relief, the exit is in sight again. Slipping out quickly and never looking back, you realize you’ve just been Fitch Slapped.
Now, you may not have been a preppy East Coast kid like me, saving your food court paychecks for the next trip to Abercrombie. That doesn’t matter. The Fitch Slap is versatile. The first time you saw a gray hair. The first time a kid called you ma’am, sir, miss or mister. The first time you called someone younger than you a 'kid'. When you filled out a survey and realized you’ve moved up an age group. Or when you heard yourself saying, “Twitter? I just don’t get it.” Fitch Slap explains those stinging moments in your late 20’s, when you are first realizing that being young doesn’t last forever. No matter where you hail from or what style you sport, almost any twenty-something can relate to that.
Love your musings... keep on running - and thinking! It looks like you're off to a good start with your site... any races coming up?
Posted by: Steve | January 18, 2008 at 06:12 PM