Brand New Pants

In my senior year of high school (In the Lords' year 2001) the administration of The Baldwin School of Puerto Rico decided that there was an epidemic of non-compliant pants. A few years earlier (maybe in 1999) the school decided to require uniforms. A blue, burgundy or white polo with khakis. Fine, whatever.

But people started wearing khaki colored jeans or khakis with cargo pants pockets. Or they were giant JNCO style khakis (because it was the 90s) or they had chains. Or they were too low on people's hips.

SO the administration decided that they would have an approved retailer for pants. Not a chain or one of the islands mega malls (Plaza De Las Americas is the largest shopping center anywhere in the Americas outside the actual contiguous US) but a tiny boutique style store in a shopping plaza about a mile from the school. I don't recall the name but I want to say it was Kidz which was bother on bran for the school and the endless novelty PR businesses that pop up trying to earn a meager bit of cachet with straight English names The Mayaguez Food Truck Court is another.

My mother was furious. We had pants. I was not part of the problem. We had gone to Baldwin for eleven years and paid each of those.

My mother was/is not dumb but she was never one to come up with simple solutions. Everything was very convoluted and required knowing someone (una "pala" in Spanish) who knew someone to get things done. This was both a combination of her fatalism and the petty graft endemic to PR.

But in a rare moment of elegance my mother took me to Kidz and told the shop keep that I was a size 50 waist. Now, I was fat in HS. Fatter than now but never that big. I had pants that fit. The shop keep answered these needed to be special ordered and would take time. So, we left and then told the school we had tried this and were just waiting for the "approved" pants to arrive. I was then allowed to wear my non code compliant pants for what turned out was the remainder of the school year. The rule was never enforced. As homeroom teacher put it, "I have no interest in staring at students' asses."

I am recalling this because I currently work at a school and sometimes I am asked to answer questions about dress code. On the staff side however which is about 9th circle of hell Dantenian awkward as I am big fat guy and the majority of the staff is female. How am I going to tell Cathy with C that her shirt is off brand? "Hey, take that shirt off Cathy with a C!" I just parlay as I have yet to find something as elegant as my mother's solution.