I have faced several minor challenges since moving to Britain -- learning to drive on the left and developing a taste for mushy peas among them.

Mushy peas. Just the name says, "No," to any right-thinking person. All you need to know is there in the name. Much in the way that blood sausage is nothing more exciting than a sausage made of blood (I don't care how many Irish people you line up to argue with me, blood sausage is an inherently flawed concept), mushy peas are simply peas that have been smashed all together into one glop of green. They are peas that have been made even more unappetizing. It is cuisine a la Randy from "A Christmas Story."

One of the more prevalent challenges to life here has been not looking like an American. I can already sense the more Noah Webster-like* of you asking: "And what, Mr. European Fancy Pants, is so wrong with looking American?"

Nothing -- if you're in the United States. But when living 5,000 miles away from the nearest American Eagle store, one feels a certain need to blend in. I have enough "Iraq's reconstruction seems to have been orchestrated by Max Bialystock" conversations without inviting them via worn-out tennis shoes and shirts that don't fit.

The problem I face in conforming to British fashion is that the differences between British and American styles are very subtle. The "special relationship," as Winston Churchill called it, finds Brits and Yanks closely aligned on almost everything, but always with the tiniest variation between the two. For example, Americans think poop is funny. Britons, however, think it is very funny.

Recently I got a chance to watch some video footage that had been taken of me in my first month in Wales. Almost a year removed from it, I fell into teenage girl mode and cringed at the way I looked.

"I am so lame! I might as well be wearing a Members Only jacket," I thought.

Those of you old enough to catch the "A Christmas Story" reference earlier will remember that Members Only jackets were quite popular in the mid-1980s. Since then, however, they have become the jacket of German exchange students. Nothing screams, "They call me Jurgen," more than a faded gray or maroon polyester jacket with those insufferable epaulettes.

At this point in the column, my dad will be running an Internet search for images of a Members Only jacket. When he finds one, he will ask himself: "What's wrong with that jacket?"

And therein lies the real reason I worry about how much "Americaness" I am showing. What I am really concerned about is the fact that, at 31 years old, I have arrived at a stage in life when it is more and more reasonable for people to assume I am somebody's father. What I am struggling with is not so much fashion, but age.

Young people are fashionable because they are insufferably self-involved. Perhaps this once had an evolutionary benefit. Paying so much attention to yourself probably helped avoid predators and make you as desirable as possible to the opposite sex. But, as time wears on, the need to look sexy or threatening wanes. Suddenly you're out mowing the lawn in shin-high socks and a pair of shorts you bought during the Clinton administration.

I don't want to be that guy. I want to stay vain and shallow. I want to be able to spot the supposedly massive difference between a $100 pair of jeans from a store that deafens me with hip-hop versions of Supertramp songs and the $6 pair of jeans I saw at Wal-Mart.

Increasingly, I'm finding it difficult to see that difference. I struggle to identify the subtleties in British fashion, or fashion in general. In refusing my natural urge to wear golf shirts and pleated slacks I run the risk of becoming one of those guys who has completely lost the plot -- a comb-over king.

I have relinquished all control of fashion decisions to my wife, but perhaps I should also try to accept reality. It's not so bad to be 31, not so bad to be getting older. I might even find that I enjoy it. Besides, socks with sandals are really comfortable.

Noah Webster was a vociferous American patriot. He is the reason Americans don't put the letter "u" in words like "color" and "neighbor."