Sweat. Pants.

I've written before about high school and the years after we first moved to the U.S. One thing I neglected to address is the fact that I didn't realize, at first, that it was inappropriate to wear sweat pants out in public.

I've spoken to a few different immigrants about this, including a wholly unscientific survey conducted among my male siblings. We all had a similar tale of a slow dawning realization about this. I'm not sure why it's ok in Rio to wear sweat pants out in public. Maybe it's not, and it's just something we did?

Anyway, this was hardly my only fashion faux pas. I also had this baseball hat - I liked it because it was black. It also had bright orange lettering, in a color favored by surf-type gear from Rio. I liked that too. What I didn't consider was that the lettering said: "YOU CAN'T TOUCH THIS." Maybe it wasn't even "YOU." It might have been "U." I can't say I knew what I was thinking when I got this hat. My grandparents had sent to Disneyworld with a cousin several years prior, and during the trip I bought my first discman, my first cd's, and things like cool American baseball hats.

Now, of course, I'd be fine, because of that guy on 30 Rock. But back then? I thought the hat couldn't possibly be a reference to the song. I assumed it meant something else, and I guess I wore it expecting that one day, the meaning of it would dawn on me. (This is similar to how I came to learn about Pauly Shore. Surely, I thought, I am missing part of the story. This man is not famous for the things I've seen him do on MTV, I would think. There must be more to this story, I would tell myself. In fact, there was less. Much less. But I digress.)

Anyway, so there you have me - on a couple of ill-fated days in the fall of 1992, you could have spotted me in sweat pants, wearing a flannel shirt (de rigeur for emotionally needy teenagers in the early 90s), and a "U CAN'T TOUCH THIS" baseball hat.

I am writing about this, however, for a very specific reason. Namely, that it's now ok to wear sweatpants in public. I know this because Mrs. Abstract Citizen called me just the other night, surrounded by undergrads in Uggs and sweatpants, and I thought: No. This is not fair. Damn you, youth of America. Curse your capricious changes of heart. It just ain't right.

Haberdash notes

Goodbye, navy blue. You are a terrible color. Even though you clash with black, people look at me like I’M the rube when I match you with brown. I just don’t have the energy to keep fighting this battle, I’m afraid. Plus, you’re so close to black that I grabbed a pair of socks in you last week thinking they were black. It looked GREAT alongside my black suit. I had to spend the entire day in fear of crossing my legs and exposing the fact that I was wearing socks that clashed with my suit.

Moving on: my waist size has changed a bit recently – mostly because I’ve been able to stick with running and, well, also because I’m a male and my metabolism finds any excuse it can to turbocharge itself. I cinched my pants tight for a few months, but finally got sick of it and decided that I would keep my new waist and that I needed some pants to go with it. No problem – so I go and buy pants in the same length, but two sizes smaller around the waist. Except…that…I’m taller now? All my new pants are too short. What the hell gives? If it’s true, as Ms. Citizen claims, that my ass is slowly disappearing, shouldn't the pants be a bit too long? Is there any explanation for this phenomenon, other than the obvious and highly unlikely tricenarian growth spurt?

And finally: undershirts. Or the underwear-shirt, as my father calls it. For years, I resisted. I thought undershirts to be the provenance of yankees and colonialists. Humans sweat! Why hide it? …except that suddenly, summers became very complicated. I would arrive at work dripping in sweat. And when I one day tried an undershirt on, I discovered that somehow it actually kept me cooler. I felt tidier. And from that moment on, I was sold on wearing an undershirt whenever the temperature is above 80 F or so. It still puzzles me to see men in the office or on the metro who wear undershirts every day, even in the winter, but I guess for some it's just easier to have year-round undershirt policy rather than a seasonal one.

But I recently made a not insignificant switch in the world of undershirts. I bought some of these. And it’s safe to say that for a split second, when I take my dress shirt off and stand there in the tank top, I feel like an off-duty cop or a sleazy low-grade mobster. I rub my temples, imagine I have a holster under one arm. I want to say things like, "Ferchrissake, Ginny, you have no idea what it's like out there! I'm putting my life on the line. Every. single. day." And so on. It's so cool.

Why did we let the average crankhead on "Cops" co-opt this great fashion statement? While I’m not ready to wear one of these outside the house, let me tell you - it’s the only item of clothing that I own that can make me feel, for a split second, tougher than I really am. And in that department, a guy like me needs all the help he can get...