It was the start of my sixth grade year. My parents were deep in the throes of a war over career success. My mother had wanted to go to nurse anesthesia school and my father had said no. White male chauvinist men did that back then when America was great for them.
My mother now seemed subconsciously hell bent on ensuring my father could not have a successful career either. To that end she’d laid down the ultimatum, “you can have a career or a family, not both.” According to her version of the story, dad would come home from work, have supper with the family, help us get to bed, and then head back to work. Supposedly this happened most every night. He never concurred.
Nonetheless, he chose us and in essence ended his career. He was still employed, mind you, but he was now in the “lackey" role mom wanted so that he’d be off at 5 and home for the evening as required to save the family.
Mother hadn’t fully calculated the cost of what she was asking. I was a kid and didn’t know how big the CEO-to-grunt salary switch actually was, but I did know that we had money before and now we didn’t. Honestly, I didn’t care all that much until dad set a budget for clothing for the coming school year.
When we had arrived from a small town in Central Texas to the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, just in time for school the previous year, we’d been fish out of water (yawl for sure know what I mean). On top of a distinct twang, I sported buckets of brylcreem, something pretty normal back home but which led to beads of water forming on my head out there. It had taken most of the year to make friends and find acceptance.
And now, I was about to become a proxy in the war.
Mom had determined that dad was setting such a small clothing budget just to make a point. So she schemed a counterpoint; she’d be making our clothes that year. In response to our loud wailing she instructed us to see our father and he sent us back to her. He informed us he had never said for her to make our clothes. But she was, and I didn’t see any denim when she came home from the fabric store.
Mom measured all of us, bought some patterns and disappeared for a few days. In fairness, she was a pretty good seamstress and had made many of my sister's clothes through the years even though buying them had always been an option. But apart from perhaps a pair of pajamas or two, my clothes had come from the store.
My sisters fared well. There were new dresses, flare-legged pants suits, and disturbingly brightly clashing fabrics … everything a girl in the 70s might hope for.
But then it was my turn. There were a couple of shirts that would have been nice if I’d been my grandfather but no sixth grade boy could have emerged unscarred from what was handed to me next. My “blue jeans” were made out of navy blue, double-knit fabric. If that weren’t enough torture, the zipper in the front was an invisible one with a dangling pull. I was horrified.
And then, I foolishly joined the war by announcing I would not be wearing them.
The nuclear arsenal had been activated and it was pointed at me. I WOULD be wearing them and would do so the next evening to the back-to-school welcoming event. I looked at dad. He looked at the nuclear arsenal. I donned the polyester pants and headed for my demise.
By the time the program was over, thankfully darkness had set in and no one could see what I was wearing. As sixth grade boys are prone to do, my friends chased one another through the playground and parking lot. I still do not know why – perhaps it was simply divine intervention – I stumbled and landed on one knee. The polyester rolled up around a most beautiful hole in my “jeans.”
To this day I’m accused of intentionally skinning my knee that night. That’s not true. But Lord knows, that’s only because I hadn’t thought of it.