There Butt for the Grace of God Go His Pants

Down around their butts, that’s how the teenage boys wore their pants if any of you raised your children in the 90s.  It’s official name is sagging and their boxers were not just peeking but hanging out, their butts above the jeans and the crotch of their pants so low between their legs that they walked like they had filled their pants.  This fashion trend is said to have begun in the prisons where inmates were given clothes too big and not allowed belts lest they hang themselves or use them as weapons.  The Hip Hop and Skate crowd latched onto this trend and from there it went mainstream and landed in MY house full of teenage boys.

Because I had four teenage boys and they had lots of guy friends I had to look at this pants around the butt thing ALL.  THE.  TIME.  Every time I looked at any one of them with their pants around their butts I wanted to yank them up over their ears and give them a massive wedgie.  

Remembering that it is not unusual that adults think young people’s fashions are distasteful I thought about the style of my own teenage days to get some perspective that perhaps we too had some ludicrous style choices back in the early 70’s.  Let’s see, hot pants, cute, sexy, comfortable except in the winter in Chicago.  White go go boots, cute, sexy, comfortable even in the winter in Chicago and if any guy got fresh you could get a nasty kick in.  Blue jeans as tight as you could possibly get them, cute, sexy, ok not so comfortable but at least they stayed up and nothing was hanging out.   

I read once that a janitor in a high school was so fed up with this style, that he would sneak up behind the boys with their pants so low, yank them up as high as he could and then put a padlock through the belt loops essentially requiring them to walk around with a wedgie all day, also referred to as being “Urkeled”  The boys were on high alert when this janitor was around but he was sneaky and caught quite a few and as the weeks went by fewer and fewer boys wore their pants so low.  I wanted to give this janitor a medal.  I wanted to BE this janitor.

I finally declared that no one could walk into my house with their pants down around their butts. In my home they had to have their pants up on at least their hips.   I held their snacks hostage.  Food to teenage boys is their lifeline.  No more corn dogs, chips and guacamole, burritos, cereal or hot pockets unless their pants were up on their hips.   I told my boys to let their friends know there would be no sagging in this household.  Tell them I would show no mercy. 

Out the front window of our living room you can see people as they walk up our steps to our porch and the front door.  I watched as my boys and their friends walked up those steps and as they did, they would all pull up their pants simultaneously.  Ah, relief from my torment.  

But not quite.  Too frequently I would still see the boys walking through the house with their pants down around their butts.  My second son, Jake, was the worst offender.  He had changed the way he walked so much to keep his pants up that he was struggling with his posture and getting shoulder aches.  He told me he thought he needed to see a doctor.  I told him all he needed was a very tight belt and I would be glad to purchase one for him.  He declined.  My oldest, Zach, went to the same High School as Jake.  I told Zach that if he ever saw his brother at school with his pants so low, he had my permission, my blessing, to pull his pants down around his ankles.  I told him he wouldn’t get in trouble from me.  I thought maybe if his pants got pulled down around his ankles in front of his classmates that might do the trick.  You see how desperate I was.  Public humiliation as a solution to the problem.  But, alas, the low pants did not bother Zach as much as they did me and he refused to get involved.  

One Saturday evening after our annual Halloween Party Jake was folding a blanket with Ali, the teenage daughter of some good friends.   By this time my disgust with the pants around the butt style had hit an all time high and I knew I had to figure out either how to let it go (yeah, right, in your dreams) or what to do about it.  I knew I was too crazed to let it go so I needed to do something and I needed to do it soon because I was losing my sanity.  Jake and Ali were folding the blanket so they were facing each other and as always Jake’s pants were down around his butt.  I could just feel my blood pressure rise looking at it.  Zach was standing to the side.  I slowly turned toward Zach and I looked at him and he looked at me and I looked at Jake’s pants and Zach looked at Jake’s pants and I nodded. You know what to do Zach.

He reached over and pulled on Jake’s pants.  But not only did he pull his blue jeans down, he got his boxers too so for a split second Jake stood there facing Ali with his jeans and boxers down around his ankles naked from the waist down.  Jake screamed, Ali screamed, Zach screamed and Jake threw himself on the ground covering himself with the blanket.  I confess I laughed.  I laughed so hard my sides ached.   Laughing at my son’s humiliation was not one of the stellar moments of my parenting. 

I wish I could say that was the end of the sagging in our household but as we all know you tell a young male to do something and they will do the exact opposite.    He did move around the house a little more cautiously and had a little more respect for how far I would go when driven to near insanity and from that day on when he brought his friends who had yet to meet me over to the house he would warn them “She’s like a charging rhino, don’t make eye contact and no sudden moves”  and I would see them walk up the front steps,  glancing cautiously side to side,  grabbing their pants and pulling them up over their hips.