The Dirt Field

For the first eleven years of my life, I was highly averse to wearing jeans. In preschool, I would become distraught on days when my mother would not permit me to wear a dress. Nevermind that my one memory of a dress back then involves the time I fell in the toilet while wearing my red alphabet dress; I loved my dresses. Once I hit elementary school, I decided to switch to a more casual style, one that involved brightly-colored spandex leggings with slouch socks and a tee shirt tucked in. I think my mother’s goal in choosing my clothing was to see just how many loud colors she could pile on me in one day. I have to tell myself that she was secretly trying to amuse herself, because the alternative is realizing that she actually loved seeing her child in neon green and orange leggings with neon pink socks.

I’m sorry, Mom, but have you seen pictures of me back then? I’d post them here, but I’m afraid the glowing colors will damage my screen.

A lot has changed since those days, however. First and foremost, leggings have become cool, something they most certainly were not back when I had a vast collection of them filling my drawers. Now girls put black leggings under skirts or wear them under tunic shirt and it’s considered being trendy and stylish. I’d like to believe that eight year-old Lindsay was just way ahead of her time, but even I don’t drink enough to believe that pile of crap.

The other thing that is different now is that I actually wear jeans. In fact, I don’t wear anything except jeans, and the same pair over and over for that matter. It started being something I did for the sake of comfort and ease – I am allowed to dress casually at work, so I started getting into the habit of throwing the same jeans on day after day. This went on for so long that I have made a game of wearing the same jeans every single day for the past three months, just to see if anyone says anything.

I wash them periodically.

Only one person has commented thus far, and he moved to Texas to escape my filthy habits, so it appears that (A)nobody else cares, or (B)the gossiping behind my back is mighty and ferocious, but highly subdued.

The problem at this point is that the jeans aren’t holding up very well anymore. While zipping them up the other day, something broke on the zipper and now I have to carefully thread the little zipper pull back onto its track in order to safely hide my girl bits behind denim. The pants have also become so worn that they feel more like spandex from my childhood than crisp denim. I’ve considered calling the manufacturer to complain about the excess wear on my $88 jeans, but somehow I think when they ask about my usage of the pants, my case will immediately be lost when I say that I’ve worn them continually for the past three months.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve taken them off to shower, because I’m afraid they might start getting too clean and that would be bad.

Perhaps it’s time to invest in a new pair.