Hang Low

I was just reading about how the Florida senate is in the midst of passing a law that would effectively prohibit teens in school from wearing their pants down around their crotch. For a second, I thought, "Hell yeah!" Then I back tracked.

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I can't stand that shit. I absolutely hate it. Get a fucking belt! Or pants that fit. What's the point of constantly having to A) pull your pants up to your crotch or B) have to keep your hand on the front of your pants to keep them up?

I'm not saying that I'm the model of ultimate fashion. I dress like a fucking slob and I know it. And I'm sure lots of people see me, especially those who see me day in and day out, and say, "Christ, look at the fat guy. Doesn't he own anything other than Levi's or black t-shirts? Get a real wardrobe, you dumbass!" And I'm sure the kids who are wearing those baggy ass pants say the same thing I'd say to someone who said that to me. "Fuck off, I'll wear what I wanna wear."

I like to rant and rave. A lot. Probably more than I should. Especially about shit like this. I mean, it's not my life they're leading out there. Its their lives. And if they wanna walk around looking like morons, like me, they can do it till the cows come home. And as long as they choose to do it, I'll keep railing against them.

Sure, I can justify my fashion atrocities. I can justify them all day long. I tell people one thing all the time when they ask me about my black shirts and blue jeans. I tell them about how Albert Einstein had the exact same pair of clothes for each day of the week and told people that he did so because it was one less thing he had to think about each day. Then I found this:

I heard that Albert Einstein wore the exact same thing every day. Is that true?

Another story about Einstein that is highly exaggerated but has some basis in reality concerns his clothing. Many say that Einstein wore the same thing every day and had a closet full of the exact same suit, shirts, ties, and shoes. This isn't true, especially when Einstein's second wife, Elsa, was alive. Elsa took a firm hand when it came to her husband's appearance, and pictures of the two of them touring everything from Japan to the American Southwest show Einstein in beautiful silk vests, and dapper neckwear -- as well as in a kimono and an American Indian headdress. But after Elsa passed away and Einstein spent his last 20 years as a professor emeritus at Princeton, his clothing did become more, er, irregular. He openly disliked wearing a suit and while already legendary for often going sockless, now he wore sandals. Perhaps the most common pictures of Einstein from that time show him happily shuffling around his Princeton study wearing a big gray sweatshirt. Luckily for Einstein, his life coincided with the invention of the cotton sweatshirt -- for he was enamored of the soft warm comfortable garment.

So that shoots my rationale in the foot. Lops it right off, actually. I guess I do it because I'm lazy. I like black. I like Levi's. I'm a creature of fucking habit. I own slacks and nice shirts. I use to wear them often. Now, if I do, people wonder if I've just been to church or why I'm so "dressed up". Regardless, it's how I enjoy dressing. I've been in a funk for sometime. I think that's part of it too. There's a lot of things I could say to justify it. But at the end of the day, if this is what I want to do, that's what I'll do.

So back to the saggy pants. I could see, simply by watching a lot of these kids walk around with their underwear hanging out, that, while it seems like a cool fashion statement, it is just irrational. I mean, if your wallet is in your back pocket and your back pocket is down near your calves, what the fuck is that? And how are girls going to say, "Damn, look at him. I can see most of his underwear. That's hot?" But then I'm not their age anymore and I have absolutely no clue what girls that age think. I've even heard that they make pants with the underwear attached and set above the pants, so's to save the user the trouble of having to pull them down. Can you believe that?

I guess this rant boils down to one thing: there are things that the government can tell us we should do and the things they have no right to enforce. Personal freedoms. Our right of expression. Yeah, that's traveling on the razor's edge. I mean, we get into all kinds of messes when we take that stance. But in an age where our government is dawning the mask of "Big Brother" and we are constantly in jeopardy of losing our personal freedoms for the sake of some bureaucrat or some conservatives' ideal of what is good and right, what are we to do?

Leave the kids alone. Just like they left us alone. And how they left our parents alone. Once we start to cross that line, to infringe on a freedom as basic as what we're allowed to wear, the only place we have to go is to that place that, as Americans, we've railed against our whole lives.

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