Brand Loyal

If I had to describe myself the first thing that comes to my mind is the word plain. Now don't get me wrong, to me plain is a good word, being plain is a good thing. If you add average to plain perhaps that's closer to the point. I prefer clothes that are average and plain, no labels, nothing that's in or cool at the moment, no company logo. Just plain is fine with me. Of course that makes me different from a lot of people in the world but that's fine with me, I've never felt like I fit in with what the mainstream world does anyway.

My color preference has always been for darker or earth tones. It's very rare to find me in a red shirt, hat, etc. As a matter of fact I don't think I own much that is red. Orange and yellow are out of the question. I just don't like things that are bright because overall bright equals flashy and that goes against my whole plain ethos. This also bleeds over into other areas, like cars. I've never owned a brightly colored car in my life and never will if I can help it. Right now I've got an old white truck and that's as bright as I can get. Most of the vehicles I've owned were older, a good deal of them beaters and I've never even owned a brand new vehicle. The closest I ever came was one that was three years old.

I've been that way as long as I can remember. Back in the 70s when I was a child designer jeans became very much in demand. Everybody had to have them at my school. Everybody but me that is. To me it didn't make sense, the only thing really different about these jeans was that there they used some extra stitching to put the brand name on the pocket. Otherwise they looked pretty much the same as any other pair of jeans. That's it. For the privilege of paying three or four times the cost of a regular pair of jeans that's what you got. I still don't get the sense of paying solely for a name.

Another descriptive thing about me is that I'm what you call brand loyal. On the rare occasion that I do choose to wear something that's not plain I will wear something that shows my support for a team, product or cause. However I will not wear another teams clothing no matter how popular they are or even if I am given the clothing for free. For instance, I am a fan (sadly) of the Cleveland Browns and will only wear a shirt from them, not any other NFL team. The NFL of course wants people to be fans of the league more than any one certain team. That way they watch more games which drives up ratings which drives up the cost of commercial time which means more money in their pockets.

Many years ago my younger sister went to Florida and when she came back she gave me an Orlando Magic (NBA) t-shirt. While I didn't expect and even appreciated the gift, it sat in the bottom of my closest for about a year before I gave it away with some other clothes to charity. More recently my mother-in-law had sent me two shirts that I could wear to work but both had designer logos on them and I asked my wife if she could get the receipt so that I could return them and get something plain. Well, my wife is from Peru that was considered to be rude but I'd rather be rude than let them sit and end up giving them away. One good thing that came from it is now my mother-in-law knows what I like (and how I am) and about three weeks ago she sent me two more shirts, exactly how I like them. In both cases I really appreciated the thought and the gift but I had to stand by my convictions.

To sum it all up what does this messof opinions mean, other than that I'm weird? I can't really say. It's just an apt description of me, what I like and what I feel like. I feel quite happily that I'm plain and brand loyal, it's just the way I am for better or worse. The lesson is don't go sending me a bunch of bright flashy shirts (bowling and rockabilly type shirts do seem to be an exception) although if you do I promise I'll find them a happy home and I'll truly be thankful that you thought of me.

Published by Don Leach