My Favorite Jeans

The quality of my favorite pair of jeans is questionable, to say the least – But that doesn’t mean I should stop wearing them, does it?

I own a pair of jeans that I have taken on and off many times over the years. I wear them around the house, I wear them to the grocery store, I wear them over to friends’ house, etc. If I could, I would wear this pair of jeans everyday. If I did wear the same pair of jeans ever day, would people begin to snicker snide, unflattering comments about my wardrobe and how it reflected me as a person? Could my hygiene become suspect to others, my wife included? Yes, but so what. They are my favorite pair of jeans. No other pair I own comes close in comparison.

The only problem with this pair of jeans is there are three significant holes on the left leg.

The location of the holes is not even obscene. There is one hole located at the bottom of the jeans, lower than my ankle. This hole is the direct result from the constant grind of the pavement that my shoes or boots delivered.

I generally wear my pants a little loose. Going back a few years now, baggy jeans was a fad that was quite prominent during my youth. The baggier, the better. To my older readers, the correct terminology used when describing the wear of pants below the butt crack is “saggin’.” I swear I saw guys who would have their pants sag to the their knees just as I swear I saw guys wear shorts that sagged to their ankles. I think we called those “shants” (quite original, eh?) for short.

Saggin’ in the house! I’m way to white to pull that off, aren’t I? I am completely driving on the wrong side of the road right now.

Many companies flooded the market with varying styles of baggy jeans, but one company was king, JNCO (Judge None, Choose One – JNCO). Thinking back to this fad, how did it ever work? I mean really?

I don’t know where the baggy jean phenomenon originated from, but thanks in large to Wikipedia and Google; I’m making an educated guess with the West Coast. They were everywhere I looked, and I remember so many people I knew wearing them. I never fully embraced the JNCO craze because I never owned a pair of JNCO’s, but I did enjoy a little space between my leg and the fabric.

(CHRISTMAS GAG GIFT IDEA TIME: If anybody could find me a pair of new or used JNCO’s that were sold around 1996, that would be awesome!)

I’m not fully sure when the JNCO fad ceased to exist, hell, it could have made it’s way back now for all I know. I’m so far removed from style and fashion that my word does not hold much credibility. The point is that even though different styles come and go my preference in jean wear remained loyal.

The second hole is slightly below my knee. For the life of me, I do not know how it was made. What I do know is the hole continued to grow with approximately every five wears. This is because my big toe would always find its way into the hole. I would be conscious about the hole, I would try to avoid the hole, but I always seemed to insert my toe into the hole and proceed to make it larger and larger.

The last hole is located on my thigh. When I bought the jeans I made the mistake of buying “trendy.” The jeans did not have a hole when I bought them but they did have the “worn” look. Everybody knows the “worn” look.

The worn look I’m referring to is when jeans are made with the holes, or made to look as if they were worn so much the threads are completely worn out. This was stupid and I know it. I never understood why people (or why I did for that matter) buy jeans with holes in them.

My stupidity was rewarded with the thin fabrics eventually breaking, revealing my thigh in the process. The hole is not up high enough to make anybody uncomfortable, and even if the hole did make somebody uneasy about sight of my thigh…Well I wouldn’t care.

This pair of jeans is so comfortable! I can only think of one other pair of jeans I’ve owned that I ever felt the same about. The other was a pair of Tommy Hilfiger I bought my junior year of high school, and kept all the way through college. I wore this pair of jeans as much as possible too, and consequently, this pair too was accompanied by a giant hole.

(If you haven’t noticed, I tend to hold onto clothes for a while. I hold on to a pair of shoes longer than most people hold onto a 2030 retirement mutual fund.)

The hole in my Tommy Hilfiger’s was the entire back right pocket. The hole started small and eventually grew out of control. At the holes worst, I could literally put my head inside of it. So if you think about it, I had my head up my ass.

I tried sewing the hole and I believe I even had somebody attempt to patch the hole up. Nothing worked! With a hole that large the average person would simply trash the jeans or buy a different pair; but I didn’t want a different pair. I already had a perfectly good pair of jeans, at least in my mind.

What I did was wear boxer shorts or briefs, long enough to cover any controversial area exposed by the massive butt hole. My idea worked and gave me more time with my 1^st favorite pair of jeans.

I don’t know what happened to that pair of Tommy Hilfiger jeans, but I wish I did. I think they got lost in one of the man moves throughout m life. I miss those jeans though. Sigh.

What I learned about myself over the years is I’m somehow engineered to embrace a grungy look. The holes in my pants and the continued wear are not so much white trash as it’s more lack of class. Maybe I present myself negatively to strangers when they see me wear jeans that belong in a dumpster – But that’s just the way I am.

I don’t need a new, current line of designer clothes or to budget a monthly shopping trip to acquire some new threads. I’m comfortable with the way I dress and I think it properly reflects my personality, whether that be perceived good or bad.

The last thing I can tell you, the first pair of jeans I described; I’m wearing them right now. I also wore them two days ago, and the day before that. So what. Maybe someday I’ll wake up and say, “Now this is just trashy. These need to go.” But I can promise you that today’s not the day, and tomorrow is not looking likely either.

I left this part at the end for a reason, because it strips me of my dignity. Remember at the beginning when I wrote, “If I could, I would wear this pair of jeans everyday?” Yeah, well the reason I don’t – the wife. Women. . .