I’ve recently had reason to contemplate how my clothes wear out. Right before Christmas break, I had to throw out one of my work pants because I had holes on the inner thighs. Since it was a wearing hole, and not a tear, there didn’t seem to be any way to salvage the jeans, unless I started to wear chaps to work over this particular pair of jeans. In fact, I may need chaps for all my pants, because it seems like the thigh rub is a common cause of pant replacement. I definitely don’t have a thigh gap. Never did…even when I was leaner and stronger than I am now. People like me don’t wear corduroy pants, simply because the thigh rub is a fire risk if I am forced to run. And they make a lot of thigh rubbing noise, which is irritating. On these particular work jeans, I discovered the holes in the thigh after a work shift, which always makes one wonder if anyone else may have noticed that I had holes in the thighs of my jeans. If they noticed, they didn’t say anything. I suppose that’s good because there really isn’t any solution for this particular problem other than going home to change…in fact, that may be why my coworkers didn’t say anything. They didn’t want to cover my station while I left to change.

A week after the thigh-wear jeans went into the trash, I had another work pant injury. On that particular day, I worked my shift, went shopping for a Christmas gift for Abby (Trent’s girlfriend), went to a sports store to find ski gloves and socks for stocking stuffers for my kids, and stopped at the grocery store to grab some food. I ran into a few people I knew. Upon returning home, I ran to the bathroom (because that’s what people my age do after a long fruitful shopping trip) where I discovered a six inch hole in the butt of my pants, running down the side of my pocket. Immediately, I envisioned myself bending over to grab a Christmas ornament, or peanut butter, or whatever. How long had this tear been there? And of course, I was wearing wacky underwear that I don’t even like. UGH! How much of humanity had I shown the whacky underwear??? And maybe a little butt cheek? Although, I don’t actually have a little butt cheek. I show Travis, and he reached over as if he was going to inspect the degree of the tear. Instead, he hooks it with a finger and rips the all the way down my left leg. I screamed…because that’s what you do when your husband tears open your pants…not that I had reason to know that before that very moment.

So, after having time to contemplate how much humanity I have shown my underwear and inner thighs, I have determined that one of two things need to happen. Either I need to replace my hard working pants more often to prevent lower body blow outs, or the pant makers need to come up with reinforced inner thighs and butts on their curvy jeans. A sort of inner-chaps on their pants. I’m probably going to have to go with number one, because extra material in those locations could add more girth, and I definitely don’t need more girth. So I toast to my fellow curvy girls. Fat bottomed girls may (or may not) make the rockin’ world go round, but we definitely buy more pants than our skinny friends. So we fuel the economy. I’m sticking with that.