Sweats

The fact is, I wouldn't go anywhere without six-dollar, Wal-Mart sweat pants. I probably wouldn't wear them just anywhere--call me Puritanical--but I wouldn't leave home without them. They get me through the weekend. Shoot, they get me through most nights.

I wouldn't have admitted that last week. I'd come simply to assume that those of us who wore sweat pants most of the time were either bona fide jocks or aging plump people, like me--well, and pregnant women; in short, those who wore them as a badge of honor or those who, like me, simply couldn't wear much else and manage timely breathing.

I was wrong. According to Sean Macauley's wonderfully silly blog on the Daily Beast, Adam Sandler wore his hang-out pair of sweats to Sunday brunch recently and, by that eye-popping gesture, brought sweats out of the closet and family room, so to speak. His was, by Macauley's account making a California-level, verifiable fashion statement.

My students have been wearing them to class for years already, with my blessing. I have no idea if they wear them to movies or shopping or whatever, but I haven't seen them in church, although those huge colorful water jugs have been lugged along for at least a couple of years already. Who knows where Macauley's brazen act might lead? It's not hard for me to guess that sweats for worship is comin' round the mountain.

According to Macauley, Sandler's iniquitous choice was on display for all of LA. Not only that, the pair he flashed were legitimate "home-only" sweatpants, not fancy designers. Macauley calls them "the universal wardrobe shorthand for sloth and lassitude," and a way of tragically admitting (as Seinfeld must have said somewhere along the line) that you have ssimply given up.

No matter. I love 'em. Here I sit on a bed in a tiny motel room, cross-legged, breathing easily and smoothly, my fingers dancing over the keys. In jeans, I'd feel corseted.

If Sandler wants to wear them to brunch, I say good for him. He wants to be, as I am right now, comfortable. In fact, I think I'll wear them to breakfast, even though I'm a visiting professor.

Well, maybe not. I don't quite dare, and the fact is I'm a long ways from Hollywood.

But I say bravo to Sandler's brazenness. Even though I'll pull on khakis to teach tonight, I'd druther hold forth in my sweats. Maybe there's a new day a'comin'.

Long live lassitude.