A New and Exciting Life

I have a tendency to become attached to certain things. It's a bit silly, but I think this phenomenon was explained quite well on the T.V. show Seinfeld, where Jerry had trouble throwing out his favourite ratty old T-shirt which he had named Golden Boy. I become a little attached to my jeans.

My jeans go through a life cycle. First they are crisp and new, and I can wear them just about anywhere. I can strut about town in them. They fit well, look good, and I even wear them to work when I'm out on farms or with clients who I'm comfortable with.

Then my jeans enter their middle age. They become a little faded and somewhat thin in certain places. I can still wear them when I go out shopping, or places where nobody will take a particular interest in me. This seems to be the longest lasting phase of their lives. I usually have two or three pairs in their middle age.

Eventually they become old and tatty, and they are consigned to a house-bound life. Usually there will be a rip or two in the knees, or inexplicable holes in odd places. I wear them when I'm doing chores around the house or have to go and do a particularly dirty job that isn't quite dirty enough for the full on coverall treatment. My coveralls last forever.

With a certain sadness I will realize that my jeans are no longer viable, and I should get rid of them. My mother would probably have cut them up into smaller squares for patches or fashioned them into hideous denim shorts, but I'm not talented like her. It's into the garbage they go. I have enough oily rags to last a lifetime as it is, so there's no need for that either. It's a sad day when I throw out a trusty pair of jeans.

Until recently that is. One of the benefits of having a teenage son who is the same size as myself is that I can shift the burden of guilt onto him. He will wear anything (I suspect the holier, the better). I no longer have to throw my trusty companions out, he will wear them for years to come until you can read a newspaper through them. One of my recently demoted pairs of jeans has become his church-going jeans.

It's actually a moment of joy when I hand them over. To him, they might as well be brand spanking new, and they are much appreciated, while I get the sensation that I'm granting them a new and more exciting life. God alone knows where those jeans are going to go and what they will see, probably a heck of a lot more exciting life than simply being a middle-aged guy's pair of jeans.

I hope my son stops growing, he's 6 feet and tall enough, so I hope to be able to pawn off my old jeans to him for years to come.