I pulled this one out of retirement (I'm trying to finish a big essay). But I know very well it fits, sort of--at least it's comfy right now because the truth is I have not been out of sweat pants for something close to a month. It's been a comfy lock up that way.
So here's an old piece from February, 2010--nine years old, but, amid the pestilence, still of some use.
________________________
The fact is, I
wouldn't go anywhere without six-dollar, Wal-Mart sweat pants (well, that's not true--times have changed, or I have). I probably
wouldn't wear them just anywhere--call me Puritanical--but I wouldn't leave
home with 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 Sandler'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 simply 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' (there is).
Long live
lassitude.
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