07-047
Supersized In A 42-Regular Sort Of World
©2007
I have often
said that I am big for my age. As a result, I have to shop in stores with names
like Mr. Gargantuan, The Humongous Haberdashery, or Trousers, T-Shirts and
Tents. It’s rarely a pleasant shopping experience.
I do not like
shopping for clothes. Buying clothes is something I do just to make sure that I
don’t cause extra-wide spread panic in the streets by going out in the nude.
Besides, my birthday suit was obviously made before the invention of permanent
press materials.
Sticking to
casual wear means I don’t have to follow the whims of the fashion police. Jeans
and a sweatshirt don’t go in or out of style. I don’t have to worry about what
I wear on, before, or after Labor Day. I may never make it onto a best-dressed
list, but at least I’ll be comfortable in my lack of chic.
I needed a new
pair of jeans recently; nothing fancy, just an everyday pair of blue jeans. You
find them in any department store or men’s wear outlet, except those stores
always run out of denim before they get to my size.
When you shop in
a regular store, you can find sizes like L, XL, and sometimes even XXL. Stores
like Mr. Gargantuan have sizes that start where the others leave off and go all
the way up to XXXXXXXXL. The label alone needs half a yard of material just to
fit that many X’s on it.
An XXXXXXXXL
leather jacket can put an entire species onto the endangered animal list.
Stitch up the openings on a pair of XXXXXXXXL men’s bikini briefs, fill them
with helium, and you have a giant balloon for a gay pride parade.
Mr. Gargantuan
also charges gargantuan prices. A pair of jeans a couple of sizes smaller than mine
might cost thirty dollars. Mine cost seventy-five.
There’s one
thing that isn’t oversized by any extent of the imagination in these outlets.
You’d think a store with a clientele that is taller and wider than average,
might put in a change room that is also taller and wider.
I took a pair of
jeans into a change room. It was slightly larger than a telephone booth. Just
trying to get my shoes off, took more movements than a rhythmic gymnastics
performance.
The salesman
came to the door a couple of minutes after I went in and asked how the pants
fit.
I said, “I don’t
know yet. I bent over in here and I’m still trying to get the coat hook out of
my butt.”
So, it really
should come as no surprise that I don’t enjoy shopping for clothes. Having to pay
so much more than the average person for a pair of jeans, not to mention
performing a do-it-yourself prostate examination with a coat hook, just does
not make for an enjoyable trip to the mall.
I suppose I
could always make a toga out of a California-king fitted sheet.