I waited a long time to get my 15 minutes of fame. Oh, sure, my picture’s been in one newspaper or another three times a week for 19 years. I did a weekly TV news show for a network affiliate where I used to live. Around here, I hold forth at the occasional Public Broadcasting Service Round Table and make sporadic national appearances on CNN, MSNBC and, God help me, Fox News. And yes, that was me you saw interviewed for a few seconds twice on “NBC Nightly News” and quoted once in Sports Illustrated.
Heretofore, my finest hour … make that minute … was an appearance on “The Montel Williams Show,” where the crew constantly interrupted taping to “de-glare” the host’s shaved, sweating head so he didn’t glow like a newly minted coin under the hot lights of celebrity.
But now, at last, my stardom has been cemented in something with more gravitas than talk radio or tabloid TV. A colleague has just discovered me in Wikipedia – the online encyclopedia that has become a primary resource for deadline-driven reporters and editors, along with high school students trying to pull together term papers in a single night.
Wikipedia officially credits yours truly with being the first person to write the term “going commando” in the mainstream media.
That’s right, folks. You’re reading the column of the man said to have brought a raunchy description of not wearing underpants from the private confines of campus crudeness to the publicly printed page.
You’re welcome.
Seems I made this contribution to posterity more than two decades ago.
Here’s what it says in Wikipedia:
Slate magazine’s Daniel Engber dates the modern usage of “going commando” to “1974 college campuses, where it was perhaps an outgrowth of the Vietnam War. The origins of the phrase are uncertain, with some speculating that it may refer to being out in the open or ready for action. According to Engber many soldiers do go without underwear to increase ventilation and reduce moisture. The earliest known use of the term in print is January 22, 1985 with Jim Spencer writing in the Chicago Tribune: Furthermore, colored briefs are ‘sleazy’ and going without underwear (‘going commando,’ as they say on campus) is simply gross.”
Turns out this was part of my extensive literary opus on the 50th anniversary of Jockey shorts. I don’t remember writing the words that put me into cyberspace’s version of a history book. All I remember from the Jockey shorts story is scouring shelves of skivvies in Marshall Fields’ downtown Chicago department store. That, and traveling to an Evanston apartment to interview a scantily clad female consultant for underwear ads who appeared to be going commando herself.
Such is the mantle of those of us tasked with chronicling tightie whities.
However I came to advance the public’s knowledge of campus culture, I’d just like to say that I accept recognition of my effort with the humility it deserves.
I’d also like to say that anyone familiar with my body of work can find dozens of examples of unique tastelessness that might be similarly worthy of Wikipedia entries.
I’m guessing that few, if any, people in their late 30s ever snuck into a college dorm restroom on a Saturday night and hid in a toilet stall for three hours waiting to see if students would buy from what the religious right claimed was a promiscuity-producing new condom machine.
(For the record, no one did.)
I may also have been first to perform at Denver’s Gridiron Show with what could politely be described as a terminal case of “plumber’s crack.”
(Look the term up on Wikipedia if you’re not sure what I’m talking about.)
Of course I always hoped to be remembered as an unyielding advocate for human dignity. Now, I discover I am merely an icon for an undignified – not to mention unsanitary – fashion statement.
Oh, well. That’s the thing about fame: You don’t find it. It finds you.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go throw out a drawer full of boxer shorts.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 303-954-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
