The Shorts of Old Age

     I was walking through Walmart the other day, thinking that I should pick up some new shorts.  All of my old ones were smeared with paint, the result of various home improvement projects.  I wasn’t looking for anything fancy – just something inexpensive and comfortable.  Those are really cute tank tops, I thought.  And next to the tank tops, I spied the matching shorts. 

     Good grief!  I almost said the words aloud.  Those shorts were really short!  The inseam must have been all of three inches.  I realized that I wasn’t in the market for shorts.  I really wanted Capri pants – inexpensive, comfortable, and modest Capri pants.

     How I’d changed.  There was a time when I would have grabbed those shorts – one of each color.  Those were the days when I wore tight clothes- the tighter, the better.  I also wore tube tops.  Along with many others, I went braless in the braless 70’s.  I understood that full-breasted women would opt to wear a bra, but why would anyone wear a bra with under wires?  I remember swearing that I would never don a pair of pants that had an elastic waistband.  Ditto for briefs.  I wore only wildly colored bikini underwear.  Skimpy, form fitting, minimal – that type of apparel looked best and felt best on my skinny frame.

     Sometime during the intervening forty years, I decided that elastic waistbands didn’t dig into that roll of fat that had accumulated around my mid-section.   They also expanded to accommodate over eating at mealtimes.  I traded in my beloved bikinis for briefs that were sold in three packs.  The only way to sport the cleavage that I had finally developed was, you guessed it, to wear bras with under wires.

     There I was at Walmart searching for Capri pants.  Whatever you call them – peddle pushers, clam diggers, or crop pants – they’re the shorts of old age.