What Goes Around Goes Around Without Belt Loops

One of the biggest mistakes my mother ever made was not letting me wear jeans in high school. (Perspective is a big deal in high school.) THE most important thing to a teenager is fitting in. Somewhere. Anywhere. Even if you don't want to fit in, you want to fit in with the kids who don't want to fit in. Am I right? God forbid you're the one left standing after the musical chairs of middle school is over. I ventured into the public school system in junior high school. My chances of being the last one standing were astronomically high. I already had three strikes against me. One: my mother was an English teacher in that school. They called her "the terror of the top floor." Two: six years in Catholic school not only arrests any development of a fashion sense that doesn't have to do with plaid skirts and girl bow ties, but it eliminates your chances of knowing anything about popular culture. And three: on the first day of seventh grade, I sat in my home-made sailor dress next to my best friend Kelly Shea, who was wearing white hot pants and white go-go boots. And maybe even a halter top, but I could be exaggerating. First thing I learned in public school? I needed some store-bought clothes. I went to my mother, whose beautiful hands sewed that dress and three others during the entire sticky month of August, to ask about store bought clothes. Normally, you didn't ask my mother for something unless you were bleeding from a major artery and needed a tourniquet to keep from dripping blood on the shag carpeting. There were five of us. And she was a single parent. But that first day of junior high, I knew I was going to die if I didn't have some store-bought clothes. Astoundingly, she agreed, and she took me to Marshall's, the new discount store in town, to buy me some pants. But not jeans. No jeans. That was her rule. And you didn't question her rules. We learned that when we were younger after a few encounters with the belt (Sometimes we were lucky when we encountered the belt and didn't have to remove our pants and, under them, every pair of underwear you could find in your drawer and in the hamper.)

At Marshall's, Mom found some wonderful (her description) Danskin stretch polyester bell-bottom pants. Who was I to argue? I came from Catholic school. There was a whole bin full of these Danskin pants, and I got two pair. One brown and one purple. They had elastic waist bands. But no pockets. Later I became aware of the fact that they also had no cool visible stitching and little grommets. No button flies. No belt loops. I suppose she meant well. She probably thought they'd let me move free and unencumbered. She probably thought I'd look graceful and refined. Like a dancer. But this was 1972. Dancers were dorkey. And after observing my fellow classmates and their clothing, I came to realize that elastic waistbands were dorkey. Umbrellas in a torrential rain were dorkey. Anything not denim was dorkey. Those pants were dorkey. They lasted through seventh and eighth grades and were still in pretty good shape the summer before high school. By then it was 1974. I was doomed. That summer though, my brothers and I managed to talk Mom into taking us to a groovy clothing store on Cape Cod called "Head and Foot." It sold only hip clothes and leather accessories like pocketbooks, pony tail holders and belts. It smelled of musk incense. I knew if I was allowed to buy anything in "Head and Foot," I would be safe. Thank God corduroy became popular that year. Mom was good with corduroy. I picked out a pair of burgundy hip hugger corduroys and a long sleeved, collared shirt, boy's style, white with a thin burgundy stripe. Mom even let me buy a leather belt to string through the loops on my new corduroy hip huggers. Oh joy, oh loops!

If you grew up back East, you know that the first week of school, everyone expects it to be cool and crisp. Great sweater weather. Perfect for corduroys too. But we always forget about Indian summer, which usually hits about that time of year. I didn't care. It was either corduroys or the Danskins. I had my dignity to recover. Then, over the course of the next few months, I managed to acquire a healthy set of hips and thighs, and along with them, a few new pairs of pants for school. The Danskins had run their course once Mom realized how they showed off my new curves. Still, there was the no-jeans code.

I realize what she was hoping to accomplish with the code. Jeans, for Mom, meant hippies. And hippies stood for who-knows-what. Mom didn't feel comfortable with who-knows-what as an outcome for her children. There was only one outcome for our high school years, and that was a smoke-free, drug-free, heterosexually-oriented, abstinence-only, athletically-successful experience. In fact, there were a few girls in the grade above me who managed to project just this wholesome high school happiness, and Mom did all she could to encourage me to watch and learn. How many times did I hear "Robin So-and-So doesn't wear jeans, and she's captain of the cheerleading squad?" and "Be bubbly. Robin So-and- So is bubbly." Indeed, I enjoyed the cheerleading thing in junior high, but in high school, I was finding my darker, dramatic artist self and had no interest in cheer leading, cheer following, or cheery anything. But Robin So-and-So haunted me with her Tinkerbell nose and her bouncy walk and her perky no-jeans outfits until she graduated and I ballooned to something like 155 pounds my senior year.

I never got to wear jeans in high school. But I wore them every single day throughout college. Then I got a job and started wearing panty-hose. Then I started freelancing, and sweats became as popular in my wardrobe as jeans. I think of this story now, at age 47, because I know two things about jeans that I didn't know in high school. One: they are not always comfortable. Especially if I'm battling a few extra pounds or a little bloating. And two: Robin So-and-So was a dork. (I have no trouble with that connection, do you?) Also, as a working mother, I'm back in uniform. It includes Nylon-spandex blend, boot-cut yoga pants. Danskins. I have two pair. One in black and one in brown.