ArcaMax

I'm 69 years old and I have a Snoop Dogg T-shirt, a black one.

On the front of the shirt is Snoop's picture in black and white. He has a mustache and goatee and braids in his hair. His eyes are half-closed. Maybe he was sleepy when they took the picture.

Even though it was the day before her birthday, my wife Deborah bought it for me at a store called Five Below, a store I associate with penny candy sold at $1 a piece and brightly colored clothing and plastic accessories a teenage girl might like.

I do not go in Five Below, although I would if their name meant they had cigars for less than $5 each. Instead, I go to a nearby liquor store where they sell bad cigars for $7 each.

An old man in 2026 who wears a Snoop Dogg T-shirt has to ask himself what it means culturally and politically.

I do like Snoop Dogg's music, the way I like a lot of rap if it's well-written, but normally I listen to what they call "classic country," which was just called "country music" when I was in high school.

I listen to Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Lefty Frizzell, Bob Wills and George Jones, music about job loss, wife loss, and drinking. In fact, the only other music T-shirt I own has George Jones' picture on the front.

When you get older, you have to pay attention to the things you wear and do because you don't want people to think you're trying to "look young." It's a good idea to drop the slang of your youth, but a bad idea to pick up the slang of teenagers.

If I keep wearing my new Snoop Dogg T-shirt, I figure I'm maybe six weeks away from a guy my age coming up to me in the Dunkin Donuts and reminding me that Snoop isn't "real music" like Led Zeppelin.

The kids I'm not worried about. If any one under 25 says anything about my shirt, I can guarantee it's gonna be "I like your shirt." Maybe they'll think I'm cute, like a tiny dog in a Christmas sweater.

The political freight of the shirt is unknown.

That's particularly true when you consider that I'm not only old, but I'm white, Northern European white. My people come from rain, fog and an iron determination to have no emotions at all, or at least none you can see.

Am I trying to be Black? If I am, I'm gonna fail, and my cultural pretensions will be exposed by the blinding light of my own skin.

Politically, I guess the shirt says I like legalized marijuana, even though I don't smoke weed. I tried it and I inhaled, but my whiteness always grabbed me by my straight hair and dragged me back to Guinness Stout and whiskey.

Maybe it says I'm a liberal. It's America, after all. Even if you are allowed to admire the Black people who dominate all our sports and a lot of our music, you're not supposed to go too far. That path leads to socialized medicine, which leads to Communism. The rule in a lot of white America is still dance Black, vote white. Only Donald Trump does both like the clumsiest type of white guy.

Maybe it means I'm a slightly confused conservative, which means I own a lot of guns, but I've accepted my mixed-race grandchild.

All the really big cultural decisions are made from the lower middle class on down. Right now, if you're white, and you didn't go to college, and your job involves work gloves, you have a better chance of having a mixed-race grandchild than anyone in your family has ever had. Also, if your son really wants to wear a miniskirt, he will at some time in his life, no matter how many last-ditch attempts are made to keep him out of the ladies' room at Walmart.

I've got a drawer full of T-shirts. A lot of them I got for free covering Golden Gloves boxing. A lot of them advertise cigar brands and a couple feature journalism quotes and savings on the front. One of them reads "Evil Mutant Newspaper Columnist."

"Fake News," a guy said to me once in the gym, pointing at the shirt.

It's exhausting being so aware in America.

To find out more about Marc Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com and for Nook, Kindle and iBooks.