Is that a Duck on Your Head?
One day you’re going along, minding your own business and someone walks by with a duck on his head. And then someone else does. And someone else. And suddenly you realize wearing a duck on your head is the new thing.
I don’t know why anything becomes popular, but I suspect it has to do with who suggested it first. If I recommended you start eating orange peels or wearing your shirt backwards, you wouldn’t listen to me—I hope.
Obviously I’m not a trendsetter. Sometimes I don’t even notice a new thing until it’s an old thing. So you should take my list of The Latest but Not Necessarily the Greatest with a grain of salt…or a slice of bacon.
Bacon-flavored everything: I’m a bacon fan, though not as much as the groom I read about several years ago who declared his love for his bride by saying, “She’s second only to bacon.”
But I like my bacon straight, not in mayonnaise, frosting or candy canes and certainly not in the adhesive on my envelopes. And I didn’t make any of those up. You can also buy bacon-scented personal care products like lip balm, soap and perfume, though I’d be wary of using them if you have a lot of dogs in your neighborhood.
CBD in everything: While CBD (cannabidiol) comes from cannabis plant, it doesn’t have the mind-altering effects of that more famous ingredient, THC. But it is believed to have some therapeutic properties, so manufacturers are suddenly putting it in everything from gummy bears to mascara. Really.
You can buy CBD-laced bath products, lotions, lip balms and yes, even bacon-flavored CBD oil for dogs. You knew someone would come up with that.
But depending on where you live and where the CBD came from, it may not even be legal, so do your research before you buy. It would be a heck of thing to go to jail for gummy bears.
Socks as a fashion statement: I heard that socks have gotten a real toehold in the fashion world lately but I didn’t believe it until I went to that great shopping mall in the sky, the internet, to check it out. I typed the words “sock fashion” into the search box and came up with 380,000,000 results. I didn’t read them all—even half of them. Even ten of them. But I did see a lot of socks, including a really fancy pair worn by the singer Rihanna. They were decorated with crystals which I think would be hard to walk in. Plus they cost $1,340. You sure wouldn’t want to lose one of those in the dryer.
Dropping microphones: After seeing actors on TV commercials drop microphones for the fiftieth or sixtieth time, I went to that fount of all wisdom—the internet again—to find out why everyone is doing that. Turns out the mic drop is so common it has its own Wikipedia page. And it’s not new. The first recorded mic drop was by Judy Garland in 1965 on The Ed Sullivan Show. Like I said, it takes me a long time to notice a craze.
But mics are being dropped with alarming frequency these days, often by comedians and rappers. Apparently dropping the microphone at the end of a performance signals triumph, not as I thought, disrespect for other people’s property.
There are so many other fads we don’t have time to discuss: Chocolate-covered everything—including pickles, onions and, of course, bacon. Selfies, even by those of us who once ran from the room every time someone brought out a camera. Jeans that look like they’ve had a run-in with a barbed wire fence.
It’s frustrating trying to keep up with the latest craze, and sometimes I’m not sure I even want to. Then I remind myself, fads are like kidney stones. They may be painful for a while, but eventually they pass.
(Dorothy Rosby is the author of several humor books including Alexa’s a Spy and Other Things to Worry About, Humorous Essays on the Hazards of Our Time available in early 2020. Contact drosby@rushmore.com.)