I need new jeans. My current jeans are quite literally falling off my legs. The ass is blown out, every time I step into them they rip, and I can’t wash them because they will probably disappear in the washing machine. Now don’t get me wrong, I love them — that’s actually the problem: I love them so much I wear the shit out of them.
Buying new pants is nightmare. No store has pants even remotely as sweet as the ones I am wearing right now — that’s kind of a rule for buying pants. Plus, you have to drive around to a whole bunch of places and in the end, you just settle for the best of a bad bunch. But maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m the only one who has bad luck with buying jeans. It’s probably because I have weird legs; in fact, I’m sure that’s the reason — my short legs are impossible to please.
When I was 14 I broke my femur playing soccer. A big lardo fell on me and managed to snap my right leg in half. I remember it pretty distinctly because it was my first broken bone, and it was the first major injury I sustained where I didn’t cry. It was also the first time that I said “fucking ballsack” in front of my dad.
When they took me to the hospital they told me that I had to have pins put into my leg, but also, the hospital I was at was a bag of shit, so my mum had me transferred to a better one. The new hospital was a real tight joint. They were all: you don’t need pins! But, you will need to be put in a straight-legged cast from your hip to your toe for 10 months. And here’s a wheelchair, which you will need to use for several months.
Remember, I was in grade 9 at the time; I was 14, already ripe for the teasings, but now I was in a wheelchair, with one leg out in front of me like a gibbled battering ram. And they made me take the elevator; they even gave me a special key. I was like the pretzel man from Usual Suspects, but like, in a wheelchair and not the head of a Hungarian crime family.
It wasn’t all bad though, I suppose. I got a lot of sympathy afterwards, when I was on crutches. Plus, I was given a spare block, and my hip joint became so flexible that I could comfortably raise my leg instead of raising my hand in the classroom, which I did — regularly.
I also stopped wearing conventional pants. I don’t have them anymore, but for a year or so I had several pairs of Terry Fox pants, ie. one-legged trousers. I wish I still had those pants, I’m sure they’re hilarious: party on the right, business on the left.
Ok, anyway, after they took my cast off the hospital told me that I had snapped the leg through the growth plate and one of my legs was going to be shorter than the other, unless they went in a cut the growth plate out of my “good leg”. So they did. And that put me in a hip-toe cast for another 9 months, but this time it was on my business leg.
It was a tough year and a half. And now I have stumpy thighs and my shoulders are too wide for my “supposed to be taller body”. But oh well, right? I suppose if worst comes to worst, and I can’t find a new pair of pants that I like as much as my current ones (which I took to the tailor to be shortened), I can just wear an oak barrel, with straps. Those things fit everybody.
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