This week I’ve spent a good bit of time and money clothing shopping. It is getting cold and I have almost no warm clothing to wear! I decided that if I’m going to buy clothing, I might as well get something fashionable and in style. To make sure my outfit selections were up to date with the latest trends, since I am still stuck in the 90’s (I’m from the days of BUM equipment or hypercolor shirts and umbro shorts), I brought along a few women who were kind and patient enough to go shopping with me. Unfortunately the latest fashion for men’s pants is for them to be very very tight. I believe these pants are called “skinny” jeans. It soon became clear that I would inevitably have to try on a pair of “skinnys”.
For those of you that have not noticed, the proportions on my body are a bit off. My torso arms and face are all thin, but from the waste down I am much beefier. I have a larger than expected waste and long thick legs. This has never been a problem for me. Not many people are disgusted by slightly disproportionate calves.
I reluctantly wandered off to the dressing room with a standard light blue pair of skinny jeans (not purple, red, or green). Quality seemed ok. The stitching was nice, the denim was soft, and they were priced well. Since less fabric is used to make these I suppose they are also more environmentally friendly than standard jeans. I stepped into the stall and started trying to put them on.
Key word here: trying
Everything was going smoothly until they were about 6” away from my waste. The legging must have been slightly thinner where the knee is supposed to be, because they suddenly got stuck on my calves! I decided to take it one leg at a time. I grabbed the right leg a few inches above my knee and just started pulling has hard as I could. They slowly slipped across my leg, and popped into the correct position. At this point if I had flexed my right calf these jeans would have ripped in half. I could hear the seams starting to give, but I moved to my left leg anyway. I grabbed and pulled, but this leg wasn’t cooperating! No matter how hard I tried I could not get the left leg completely on so I decided that it would be best to give up. After all, there was no way in hell I was going to be able to walk in these!
Defeated, I pulled out my left leg then went to pull the right leg off. It wouldn’t budge. I lifted the leg in the air and started pulling down on the pants, but nothing happened! I started to panic! What if they were going to have to cut them off of me? Would I have to pay for them??? I started hopping around the dressing room pulling madly at these jeans, bouncing off the walls and probably frightening everybody else in the changing rooms. NOTHING! I eventually fell backwards, caught my breath and started to think. Where have I had a similar situation? Chinese finger traps!!! I relaxed my leg, closed my eyes, and tried to imagine the jeans slipping off my leg. I then slowly started pulling. Still nothing!!! AAAAHHH!!! At this point keeping the pants in one piece was no longer of any concern to me, so I grabbed the end, planted my left foot on the ground with the toes against the wall, pushed my back hard against the other wall and started pulling out and down with all of my might. I started hearing ripping sounds, but I did not care!! I just kept pulling and pulling! Slowly the pants started to move!! I could all but taste my freedom! Inch by inch they slowly scraped across my legs screaming out a symphony of popping thread and fabric until they flew off with a force that almost knocked me on the ground! I was free!!!
To hell with fashion! I bought a pair of normal straight legged jeans and got the hell out of there.
