I was 32 when I purchased the first pair of blue jeans I had worn since junior high. My paramour Penny Wright insisted. She felt they would liberalize me, impart an affectation of human-like earthiness to my convivial but starched underwear demeanor. And she was right. But, when we went our separate ways, I stopped buying blue jeans. I resumed when I fell head-over-heels with a woman who would KILL me if I mentioned Ellen’s name here. I can count on the fingers of one hand (not counting my thumb, even) the pairs (meaning one complete trouser) of blue jeans I have owned since ninth grade. But I’m getting ahead of myself . . . .
What I really wanted to say starting out was that these old pants, pictured above are about five years old. I knew it was time to start shopping for a new pair of khaki slacks — not to be confused with slacki khacks – when my right front pocket punched through soon after new years eve 2007. But I had frikking BILLS to pay. Ameren alone was eating me a-frikking-LIVE. And Smith General Contracting and E.L. Pruitt were circling gracefully over my ‘umble hoose, anticipating the tasty marrow of my bones . . . . So I said to myself, “Not so fast, fashion plate.”
It’s not a bad thing, carrying keys and change in the left pocket.
These old pants are worn every day I leave the Batcave to intercourse with Springfield. Mind you, that’s not every day of the week, now that I’m not working fulll time. There are three, four, five days some weeks when I venture out only as far as my front porch for the mail and as far as the back porch to feed Thelonius Dog and Slick Richard. That’s okay. The world is not sending me “Miss you” notes, and I don’t often send any to the world, though there are times when I miss taking off my blue jeans in extremely classy company. The right pocket cuff was showing some fraying, but now that I’m no longer using it, I am content in knowing it won’t get worse. I wear them almost every time I substitute teach. When I sub at Springfield High, I often wear black dress pants and a red shirt, just to show the colors of my high school alma mater (GO SENATORS!) and to show how subtlely, incredible “in the know” an old geyser (I’m not a geezer yet) can be.
Yes, I have other pants, every one inherited from my demised dad who left this orb in 1994. There are, folded in red cedar drawers, light wool plaids, summer pants, which are so vibrant you can put a pair next to a classical guitar and hear the chord of an open tuning. I have not worn any of those several pairs for more than a few minutes and even then, only inside with the blinds closed.
My usual, no intercourse pants are lined, red and white striped corduroys, almost too Italian in motif for a Welsh-American, but I dig the lining in winter. They’re warmer than your average pant, and with the model airplane paint and glue spatters on them, chances are good that unless you see me on the 6:00 mews being led into jail in handcuffs, you will never see me wearing the Italianate cords in public.
Other pants are strictly for receptions, really important parties and my preformances of poetry and songery. But I’m comfortable in these old pants at some receptions, especially at the U of I art gallery gatherings. I don’t have a felt-elbowed sweater or sport coat, so these old pants are about as close to academe-retro-chic as I can get.
Mostly, these old pants and I seem destined to share each other’s company for the forseeable future; at least until a few years after I connect with a full-time employer. I’ll be paying of old debts for a long time after connecting, and I’ll be getting by with dad’s pants in the interim. They’re khaki, cool, and appropriate for a fellow in my circumstance. We get along. Don’t feel bad for me and my old pants. Both of us are laundered regularly, we constitute no threat against your moral imperatives, and until my luck changes for the better and I have to go shopping for blue jeans again, I can’t ask for better company.
Thanks for reading this.
Live long . . . . . . amd proper.
