MAGNUM and me

(Gary Rith with Petey and Jack, 1996, Magnum PI in 1980)
Times were different back then. In 1993 I was 27 and about to teach high schoolers. I looked 15 and KNEW I'd be cool with a stache. Just like my boyhood hero MAGNUM PI. You loved that show, funny, a little action, a lot of slacking, a lot of chicks on the beach, every boys dream. So I grew the stache.
The wife, who is very polite and reticent, never told me anything until the day ten years later, in 2003, when she came home from work, it was gone, and she admitted shw would NOT miss the stache. By then, of course, twas quite a bushy thing. I thought it meant MACHO but times had changed and to a lot of men of a certain type it meant Village People and leather boys, and sorry, I don't play for that team. To a lot of women it meant "tee hee, p*rn star!!!" and to my high school students? It meant Ned Flanders, which always kept the little monsters laughing "HAHA Mister Rith you look like NED FLANDERS!!!". OK, whatever. We had ten good years together. Then you get to the age where suddenly you are NOT trying to look older!