Let’s all dress up and then just disappear

June 2019

“The guy who came up with this had to be a genius,” I thought.

It was a 25-foot tape measure – a camouflage tape measure.

“Yep,” I thought, examining the plastic case, decorated in a mottled pattern of brown, tan, green and black. “The guy is an intellectual giant.”

It’s just what a fellow like me really needs. A tape measure designed to blend into the background. Maybe the guy with camo on his mind can also come up with camo car keys, a camo checkbook, a camo smart phone, a camo remote for the TV. Might as well go all the way.

But I saw that this camouflage tape, one of dozens in a big display bin at a Martinsburg home improvement mega-market, was drawing quite a bit of attention. I watched as several guys stopped to take a look, and saw three or four actually toss them in their shopping baskets.

In truth, it really didn’t surprise me that much. After all, camouflage is the official color of the State of West Virginia. In these parts, everything comes in camouflage – hats, boots, knapsacks, water bottles, ice chests, fishing boats.

I’ve even seen camouflage underwear – yes, longjohns and tops. Is it for guys who want to run around in the woods almost, but not quite, naked? If you got lost, you’d be hard to find. And that begs the question: If you happened to pop out of the woods and into somebody’s backyard, could you be accused of indecent exposure?

Lots of guys paint their battered old pickups in camouflage patterns, and their new trucks as well. It wouldn’t be too shocking to see school buses airbrushed to blend into the woods. Hearses? Why not. Might be just what a hunter always wanted but was afraid to ask for.

I’m not sure what the attraction is. Only a tiny fraction of the state’s residents are hunters who might actually need camouflage clothing. I think perhaps camo has become a political statement for those who don’t really need it but want the world to think they’re rough and ready, armed and dangerous. They’re ready to defend themselves, their families, their “way of life” against liberals, Antifas and other varieties of soft-heads.

But I shouldn’t be so hard on my fellow Mountaineers. The camouflage craze is sweeping the entire nation. I heard somewhere that two towns in Alabama have vanished, and three more in Arkansas and one in Tennessee are hoping to follow suit. A big lake in South Dakota has disappeared and the entire state of Idaho is beginning to blend into the background.

A farmer friend heard that a group of plant breeders at a major university in North Carolina is trying to develop a camouflage poinsettia, just the thing for a camouflage Christmas with a camouflage Santa. But they’re having trouble because every once in a while an unruly plant with unruly genes pops out with a bright red leaf or two, which sort of ruins the effect for the entire scene.

Somebody else told me that Victoria’s Secret is working on a line of camouflage bras and panties, but they’re having trouble finding enough room on the garments to use all the colors. My suggestion? Use the desert sand scheme instead. It has fewer shades and would blend right into the anatomy they’re trying not to hide.

One of the big fast-food chains tried redecorating eateries near Target stores in camouflage décor, I heard, thinking that would be a sight gag with appeal to the backwoods crowd. But the experiment proved to be a total flop. They did such a good job with the color pattern that hardly anybody found the restaurants anymore, and business dropped off by 90 percent. After they made big, day-glo orange hats to put on top of the stores, business picked up again.

The ultimate camo will come, I think, went Cadillac starts painting those blunderbuss Escalades in a now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t scheme. The people who buy the overstuffed SUVs to show how much money they have will be left in a quandary: Will owning an expensive vehicle you can’t see be the ultimate in conspicuous consumption?

But there’s one area where a camouflage paint job would really be useful, especially for Republican lawmakers who have forgotten their roots: the national debt.

Nobody can agree on how to get rid of it, so we might as well paint it over and pretend it’s not there. Why worry about something we can’t do anything about?

There’d be one hurdle, though. We’d have to borrow a good bit of money to buy enough paint to hide something that big, something that bright red. We’d probably have to raise the debt ceiling.

OK, so that’s not such a great idea after all.

Let’s just dress up in orange hats and have a good party. If you want to wear camo, go ahead. But don’t expect many people to notice you.