Flashbacks of Junior High

I was reading a post on Roxane Gay's blog the other day, and she makes a funny crack about how the members of her writing group should all get Members Only jackets.

The image of Members Only Jackets created flashbacks to junior high school, the fashion thereof, and other desires.

I admit I had a Members Only jacket back then in sixth and seventh grade. I got compliments from girls, which naturally made me nervous and self-conscious. Well, for full disclosure here, I doubt it was a true Members Only jacket but a knockoff of some sort that my mom picked up at the Waterloo K-Mart after strategic whining from yours truly. So a K-Members Only jacket. It wasn't in an elite membership -- let's just say that. My parents, two people who lived their early childhoods during the Great Depression, were/are the practical sort, so the jacket although goofy in obvious ways wasn't too dissimilar from regular jackets. And at K-Mart prices, there's no problem there.

The other fashion staple of the early 80s were pants that were the rage in my corner of northeastern Iowa at the time, probably a year or two after they were the in-garment on the coasts. You might have guessed what I'm talking about here: parachute pants.

Yes, parachute pants. I'm still waiting for them to make a comeback simply because I want to laugh at people for wearing the stupid garment. I will not lie though. I wanted a pair. At least one pair to be like the cool kids would suffice. But Virg and Deloras saw right through that fashion silliness. Add the strangeness of somewhat skintight garments with multiple zippers and pockets to the fact that they were expensive, that's not a good equation for this guy. No parachute pants for this fellow. No way.

Oh but I did appreciate them. I did a lot of appreciating since as we know junior high is when puberty hits. And young ladies at that time, well, they wore parachute pants. The noise the pants made as girls walked down the halls of West Junior was erotic to me. Like others, I had sensitive antennae to such things, which leads me to the accidental foresight my parents had when I get to thinking about it.

I mean, how do you hide a boner in parachute pants?

As you might have predicted, there are stores on the Internet who will gladly truck in economic nostalgia for those of us who desire, who desperately need, parachute pants. Click HERE for one such store. I wonder if I can talk Mrs. Nasty into buying a pair.