Hot Pants

It happened again, Deb thinks to herself on the first day of eighth grade. Her parents moved to a new town because her father changed jobs and she got all excited about how she was not going to be shy in her new school. That was two years ago in sixth grade. Now all she could do was observe the social groups and wish that she was someone other than who she was. Desperate for friends, Deb had collected an odd assortment of people she did not feel shy around and sat with them at the lunch table while watching everyone else.

The students at Deb's lunch table in 1970 had characteristics before their time such as obesity, effeminacy and goth. There were a few general misfits like Deb who, in addition to being shy, was critical of her clothing. She was not fashionable and well put together yet she was able to observe four categories of clothing: 1) Popular, athletic=fashionable. 2) Intellectual=plaid, sweaters and knee socks. 3) Hippie=Indian and fringe. 4) Greaser=tight and leather. Because Deb did not fit in anywhere, she could not get her clothes right.

At home Deb taped four large sheets of newsprint on her walls with the labels fashionable/athletic, intellectual, hippie and greaser. Then Deb began to cut up her yearbook putting everyone in a category around the edges of the paper. In the center she planned to paste pictures of clothing cut out of magazines and newspapers creating a scrapbook mural in her room. Although the pictures from her Seventeen magazine all went into one category, Deb was able to expand to other categories with pictures from the newspaper, National Geographic and Ladies Home Journal. She used her own money to buy Rolling Stone, a motorcycle magazine and Look.

“Where's our mural?” said the effeminate boy named Ray when Deb brought him home one day to show off her wall. She smiled at him at taped up another piece of paper where she eventually pasted Liberace, Elton John, Jackie Gleason, and Morticia Addams. He encouraged her to go with him to the mall where they took Polaroid snapshots for the mural. Then she went to the mall by herself and took more photos. When the mural was full she invited the effeminate boy, whose name was Ray, back to her room along with the obese girl who always carried a patten leather purse full of candy and the noirish girl who had a tendency to laugh uncontrollably with her head down and black hair spread all around her.

“Should I take them down and start again?” Deb asked her audience. The noirish girl laughed and the obese girl sucked on a lollipop.

“Start a new project.” suggested Ray.

Deb left the mural on her wall and went back to the mall without her camera. Categorical outfits jumped out at her from every store. Sometimes a hippie outfit would be in the middle of a fashionable boutique. A leather greaser jacket cried out to her from the otherwise drab racks of a department store.

“Take me,” said the leather jacket, plaid sweater, pink bubble shirt or Indian print skirt.

Deb experimented with the Christmas table display of spoon rings gently pushing one ring into her purse. She went home and put the ring on her night stand staring at the piece of stolen merchandise until she fell asleep that night. The next day after school she went back to the mall but it seemed too quiet so she went back on Saturday when it was packed with Christmas shoppers. This time Deb carried a large macrame purse for the ease and thrill of freeing the Indian print dress from the display rack. It didn't take her long to learn to use the fitting rooms.  A small pair of scissors tucked away in her purse removed the price tag of a fashionable pink bubble shirt. The ominous pricey leather jacket also required scissors allowing Deb to boldly walk out of the store wearing the feminine pink shirt mightily accented with leather. She held out her hand to look at her spoon ring and headed for home.

After several weeks, Deb divided her closet into four categories of new clothes while stuffing her everyday clothes into a drawer.

“Where did you get all these clothes and how come you never wear any of them?” Ray asked one day after school when Deb brought him into her room to show off her closet.

Taking from several categories, Deb put on the Indian print dress with the leather jacket, leather fringed boots and bangle bracelet.

“You're a fashion Goddess”

“Not here.”

“Come with me to visit my grandparents in New York City on Sunday. All they do is take me out to lunch then we can go shopping. They live near Macy's where they have everything and it should be very crowded. You could bring a backpack.”

Deb was thrilled to take the forty five minute bus ride with Ray from New Jersey to New York City. Her parents approved because they were going to visit Ray's Grandparents. Deb carried an empty backpack.

“Is this your girl?” asked Ray's grandmother from across the table in the Carnegie deli. Deb couldn't imagine being Ray's girl. They were wearing similar stripped bell bottom pants and patten leather belts.

After Ray explained that he and Deb were friends, the grandparents went on to tell them about how they met in a sweatshop in 1930. For ten hours a day they both sewed sleeves.

“We noticed each other but were too shy to say anything at age eighteen.”

“Until the fire.”

“He carried me out to the street over his shoulder. I was weak and coughing.”

“The rest is history!” explained Ray's grandfather with a big smile followed by an emphatic placement of his coffee cup.

“Part of the history is that we started out own company.”

“Where people made clothes but did not have to sweat so much.”

Deb then noticed that Ray's grandmother was wearing a simple elegant cashmere sweater adorned by a string of pearls. His grandfather wore a v neck. What category? She wondered and tried to finish her three inch pastrami on rye.

On the way to Macy's Ray and Deb saw a man with an overflowing shopping cart of pungent discarded things. He wore cut off shorts over sweatpants and a dirty suit jacket.

Three days after returning from New York City Deb's mother knocked on her bedroom door causing Deb to quickly close her closet. Deb was wearing terracotta orange shorts over black tights and a blazer.

“I just got off the phone with your uncle who called to say he heard about you on the 6:00 o'clock news.”

Deb felt light and tingly as her stomach did a little flip.

“You were sent home from school today while I was out?”

“Just to change.”

“Change what?”

“These.” Deb pointed to her shorts. “We're not allowed to wear hot pants to school.”

“And you got to be on the news?” Deb's mother smiled. “I guess you'll have to wear your hot pants at home. Come upstairs for dinner.”

“Deb went upstairs in her hot pants that she purchased with her own money at Macy's, New York.