Attention Shoppers: Beefcake in Aisle 1

File this one under “I must be getting old.”

Much as I hate to admit it publicly, no matter how hard I try to stick to the healthy household grocery list, I routinely impulse buy at the grocery store. It’s those “buy one, get one” offers on the junk food (especially Double-Stuff Oreos) – they just unlock the impulse reflex. It’s a test of self-discipline I routinely fail.

During my latest grocery shopping jaunt it wasn’t the Oreos, Doritos or donuts that prompted a reflex action, and I wasn’t buying – it was the beefcake, and the inspired reflex was to gag.

It was young man, maybe about 20, walking through the store shirtless wearing nothing but flip-flops, a pair of those shorts that sit down around the bottom of the butt and bright pair of blue underwear.  Yes, bright blue underwear, and no, I really didn’t need to know that… and neither did you.

Bad enough people think it’s acceptable to walk down the street in pants that look like they don’t fit (hitching their pants up every ten steps or so to keep them from falling down on their ankles), and test the bounds of decency with a shirt on.

What’s the point of wearing a pair of pants or shorts that you constantly need to keep a hand on? Wouldn’t sweats be a lot more wearable and achieve the comfort these loose fitting pants are (I guess) intended to provide? And do we really need to be exposed to the indignity of a shirtless display of peoples’ underwear on top of the silly pants that don’t fit in the name of fashion?

And, yes, I did tease my hair as high as it would go, plaster on seriously nasty gobs of black eyeliner and wear ripped sweatshirts in the eighties. I even wore dozens of those stupid rubber Madonna bracelets. The pictures of me at the time now make me question my sanity – and definitely qualify as “indecent.”

And maybe I’m just not hip, or just growing old, but the idea of shirtless, underwear-advertising customers walking around the food my family is going to eat seems to be outside the bounds of decency.

Now I know in the “land of the free” telling people how to express themselves is constitutionally frowned upon, and I am a firm believer in individual rights, but seeing as every politician, radio talk show host and columnist in the country feels empowered to tell people how to live their lives – I’m throwing my two cents into the kitty: If you want to show the world your underwear become an underwear model; otherwise do the rest of us a favor, take a look in the mirror and use some common sense.