Fashion...

Yesterday we went clothes shopping. It happens around this time every year. Two of Two is in shorts from about early April, all through the summer into autumn. Then the weather starts to get a bit colder, the wee man hangs on to his pantaloons of choice as long as possible, and then some time around the beginning of November he has to capitulate and get back into the long trousers. And, of course, since he’s wellying back eight hundred bowls of breakfast cereal every morning and growing up faster than Le Beanstalk de Jacques, his long trousers are all about six inches too short for him.
 
Not being Dynamic Action Parents, we didn’t dash out at the first opportunity and buy him new trousers for the winter. The lad has been displaying a lot of sockage at school for the past two weeks. There have been mornings when some demonic members of the Mum Collective have been looking at me in dark ways, thinking that I’m a bad parent because I’m still putting my kid in shorts. Well I’ve got news for your girlfriends, if you must know, I’m a bad parent because I’m kicking my kid out the front door in last winter’s long trousers. Totally different.
 
So we’re in the local kid’s store. In Poland it’s called Smyk. Toys and clothes. There are potential downfalls to this combination, obviously, but in general it works well. You shop, they run around asking if they can buy every single toy in the store, you say no, every now and again you drag them into the changing room and forcibly stick a (insert item of clothing) on them.
 
The day was progressing normally. The shop was quite busy, the usual bustle of kids and parents, arguments and entreaties. I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day was being piped happily around the shopping centre. Somewhere a car screeched to a halt. On the next floor up a child wailed. A clock ticked.
 
And then, just as we were thinking that the day couldn’t be any more normal, we were looking through this year’s trouser collection for little boys when we discovered them… Trousers with in-built fake underpants.
 
[Let that sink in a second. Now, if you’ve just read that and thought, oh yeah, whatever, all trousers have in-built fake underpants these days, don’t be such a DAD, then you’d probably be best just to skip to the end. However, I’ve never seen in-built fake underpants before, so I’m still aghast and feel the need to exorcise the horror. If, like me, you are shocked by the concept of in-built fake underpants, then read on…]
 
In-built fake underpants are like those in-built fake t-shirts you get on jumpers. You know the thing, grey jumper, bit of white cotton at the top to make it look like you’re wearing a t-shirt underneath. It’s an odd enough fashion concept in itself really.
 
Someone, somewhere, probably Milan or New York, has taken this idea and applied it to trousers. Perhaps there are also trouser lines with in-built fake socks, but I didn’t see any sign of them. These trousers had fake underpants sewn in around the waist, to make it look as if the trousers themselves were hanging down below the line of the underpants, so that a uniform line of underpantage was on display.
 
I don’t want to sound old – you know, I’m only forty-two, which doesn’t seem too decrepit, not yet – but why would you do that? I’m familiar enough with the concept of letting your underpants show above your breeks, in this twisted day and age. Each to their own. If you want people to see your underpants, then on you go. But what exactly is the idea of faking the pants? With the fake white t-shirt, you’re basically saving yourself the need to wear a t-shirt. So are fake underpants supposed to stop you having to wear underpants?
 
All right, adults will as adults do, but it’s just different, isn’t it? Adults have some measure of control over their bottoms, for example, and so can probably be trusted to get through a day without underpants. But wee boys? Seriously? You’re going to stick your kid in a pair of trousers with no pants in them? Why on earth would you do that?
 
The other possibility is that you intend that your kid wears actual underpants to complement the hygiene predicament inherent in the trousers with in-built fake underpants situation. But at the start of the day, that’s just going to set up so many arguments.
 
“Put your underpants on!” you shout, in the midst of the daily Pre-School Rebellion.
 
“No!’ replies your six year-old wee nipper. “These trousers have got their own underpants! They’re in-built!”
 
‘They’re fake!”
 
“What d’you mean they’re fake? There’s no such thing as fake underpants! That’s stupid!”
 
And you know, he’d have you there.
 
And let’s say you manage to get your kid to wear his own Actual Underpants, beneath his trousers with in-built fake underpants. Like your kid is going to need help looking untidy? Give him five minutes on the hoof, his trousers will be dishevelled and probably falling down, and his Actual Underpants are going to be showing above his in-built fake ones. Older kids in school are going to be staring at him and saying, ‘Look at the dumb kid, he’s got two pairs of underpants on.’
 
But then, I’m forty-two, I know nothing of fashion. Maybe the two-pairs-of-underpants look is in, even for wee boys.
 
All this ran through my head in the first fifteen seconds after laying my eyes on the trousers with in-built fake underpants. Fortunately Two of Two was off in the games area and never saw them, so he couldn’t be tempted. I walked away from the site of the in-built fake underpant discovery, feeling old and depressed and out of touch. Life, I thought, does not get much worse than this.
 
And then Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime started up.
 
“Ah well,” I thought, “that’s another five pence for Heather.”