I Love My Jeans

- jim Young 20090225

“I love my jeans, I love my jeans. My jeans are so comfortably lovely.” - Donovan

My Shirley finally convinced me to buy a new pair of jeans. I love my old jeans and am always very reluctant to give them up no matter how tattered and torn they have become.

It’s almost like I have a relationship with my jeans.

We’ve been through a lot together; my jeans and I and I just don’t want to part with them. It’s like saying goodbye to an old friend.

It doesn’t help that most jeans cost $50 a pair. I remember paying just $20 a pair back in the 60s. Why don’t they make those ones anymore?

So when we rolled up the rim at Country Style Donuts to find a $20 certificate for Mark’s Work Wearhouse My Shirley invoked Carpe Diem to drag me shopping for new jeans.

Of course once we’re in the store, My Shirley will insist that I get 2 pair because she knows it’s going to be a long time before she can get me back there again.

But they didn’t have 2 pair of the same make in my size. In fact they didn’t have 2 pair of the same size of any of the style of jeans I wanted – period.

I like to make as few trips to the dressing room as possible. So off I went with 2 pairs of jeans by 2 different manufacturers – one with a size 40 waist and the other with a size 42 waist hoping that 1 would fit.

My Shirley didn’t seem at all surprised when I returned from the dressing room to announce that both sizes fit about the same. If anything, the size 42 jeans were a little tighter on me than were the size 40 jeans.

“Different clothes manufacturers,” My Shirley patiently explained to me “have different sizes.”

I’m not sure which bothered me more; that the textile industry can get away with this or that we the consumers just accept it.

It’s not like I was purchasing a shirt that was labeled large, medium or small. I can appreciate that might be open to interpretation; especially when you add extra-large and extra-small into the mix.

But waist size – being measured in inches – is a precise measurement. A 40 inch waist in a pair of jeans should be labeled 40 not 42.

And why isn’t the Department of Weights and Measures concerned about this?

In California in 1995, Heinz ketchup was charged with under filling their 20 ounce bottles of Ketchup and forced to overfill their bottles for the next 12 months. They ended up giving away 78,000 gallons of free Ketchup at a cost of over $650,000.

I would like to challenge the Department of Weights and Measures to conduct a full investigation into the textile industry to right this wrong.

And as a recommended corrective action, may I suggest the textile industry be forced for the next 12 months to sell their $50 jeans for $20 like they did in the 60s.

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