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By Jerry Zezima

If it’s true that clothes make the man, which in my case is far more likely than the man making clothes, because I can’t sew and would have to go around in my birthday suit, risking either pneumonia or arrest, then I definitely have a fashion plate in my head.

Still, I have to wear something, even if, as a retiree, I don’t have to dress for success anymore. Not that I had much success when I was working, but at least now I can lounge around the house in sweatshirts and sweatpants (in fall and winter) or T-shirts and shorts (in spring and summer).

To steal a lyric from the Byrds, because I’m for the Byrds, there is a season (turn, turn, turn). No, I don’t know what the hell it means, either, but I do know that, according to my wife, Sue, who is very stylish, I should change my seasonal wardrobe twice a year, putting my summer clothes away and taking out my winter clothes when the weather gets cold and putting my winter clothes away and taking out my summer clothes when the weather gets hot.

And, of course, vice versa.

I never used to do this because I worked in an office where the temperature fluctuated wildly, leading to the terrible realization that there is no such thing as climate control. It got so bad that I once tried to have the National Weather Service declare my desk the coldest spot in the United States.

And this was in the summer. So why put away my winter clothes?

Another reason I have never made the seasonal switch is that my entire wardrobe is made of approximately eight yards of material.

This explains why it is contained to one small closet and three bureau drawers. On the other hand, which requires a glove, Sue has a wardrobe large enough to clothe Luxembourg.

I don’t mind because: (a) she looks beautiful in anything she wears, even sweatshirts and sweatpants, since she’s now retired, too, and (b) she buys my clothes, thus saving me the horror of having to get dressed up to go shopping.

This year, however, it has been suggested that because I am no longer working (not that I ever did any real work in the first place), I should put away my summer clothes.

I said to Sue, the person who suggested this bold move, “With global warming, why bother?”

But even I have to concede that it’s worth the trouble, if only to get a large plastic bin full of clothes out of my already cluttered office and into the attic, a large space as empty as my skull.

Sue pulled out another bin of clothes from the closet in my office.

“Whose are those?” I asked innocently.

“Yours!” she responded sharply. “You didn’t even know they were here.”

And there is a pile of unboxed and unfolded clothes on the shelf in my bedroom closet, stuff I have ignored for God knows how long, including ties, which I have seldom worn because they cut off the air supply to my brain (see: empty skull, above); swim trunks, which I should keep in the trunk of my car for when I go swimming; and a pair of paper pants I had to wear several years ago when I got an X-ray for a kidney stone.

So I am now in the process of finally making the seasonal wardrobe switch. I might even find that some of my duds are so old and unstylish, like the guy who owns them, that they can be given away, thrown out or, if I break out the fire pit, burned.

Still, sadly, no matter what the season, clothes make this man look like a dweeb

— Jerry Zezima

Jerry Zezima writes a humor column for Hearst Connecticut Media Group. His column is distributed by Tribune News Service of Chicago and has run in newspapers nationwide and abroad. He is also the author of five books, Leave It to Boomer, The Empty Nest Chronicles, Grandfather Knows Best, Nini and Poppie’s Excellent Adventures and Every Day Is Saturday, all of which are “crimes against literature.” He has won seven awards from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists for his humorous writing.