An Embarrassment of Britches

For all I know, Calvin Klein is dead.  For all I know, Calvin Klein is the Beanie Baby of the fashion world, laughably out of date and an embarrassment to own these days.  Yet,  my Calvin Klein jeans still manage to utter to me "You are fashionable, Jane!  Fashionable AND very nearly fancy!"  . . . even though you can see me underwear through the ever-burgeoning holes along the waist.

And, frankly, I can't take the pressure of having to worry about my jeans AND my underwear.  Not at the same time, at least.  So I am slowly making my peace with the fact that this pair of jeans--purchased almost a decade ago after months of unending harassment from my school "friends"--is neither new nor particularly stylish anymore.

I will never forget how proud I was after I left T.J. Maxx with these jeans, imagining what my "friends" Marti and Laura would say when I showed them my right rear pocket, the one that usually had words like "Wrangler" or "Lee's" above it.  It's possible I have never shaken my white ass so sassily as when I first donned those jeans at school, knowing that all eyes were on me and Calvin, as we traipsed down the hallway, our attitude uttering "All That!"

I don't know what it is about me and pants, but the Calvins are only one chapter in My Embarrassment of Britches (now in its 30th printing, coming out in paperback this summer!). 

The worst pants I've ever owned were sewn by my own loving mother, a woman for whom a needle and thread typically were like paint and pallet, producing beautiful things to drape across the landscape of my awkward body.  Alas, pants were a challenge for Sally.  And, as such, for me, as well.  Especially that pair she made me, the one whose crotch hung comfortably around my knees.

So immense was the crotch that I could wear a soaking swimsuit underneath these pants and still manage to air dry the suit by noon.  As I recall, I actually didn't buy a backpack for school that year, choosing, instead, to simply balance all of my books and pencils along the generous mesa that hovered between my knees.  I also didn't date much that year, as I recall. . . .

To be fair, though, I have dished it as well as taken it in this lifelong war with pants.  It was my decision to temporarily clothe son Eric in my own Chic jeans, in fact, that lead to my eventual purchase of the Calvin Kleins, not to mention some Levi's for Eric.  I'm not sure either purchase ever completely healed the wounds of my earlier decision, though.

Even today, pants continue to harass me.  A key button on one tan pair, a pair I still think of as my "good" pants, hangs by a thread so thin that could not floss a baby's tooth.  It is dangerous to pee while wearing those pants, so uncertain am I of the fate of that button.  More than one of its closet mates live without that all-important button, long ago replaced by a bloated, overworked safety pin working fervently to keep the world safe from my marauding underwear.

Maybe I should throw out all my pants and just start over.  Maybe I should become a "skirt" girl or a "dress" lady or, better yet,  a P.E. teacher and put all of this behind me.