"Denim blue fading up to the sky.............."

I first thought to write this post a week ago, but I told myself: No, don't do it. It'll make you look self-centered and vain again. All you do is complain about your current states of mind and make broad ethereal grasps toward some juvenile philosophy/musing/stereotype/truism and end up sounding like a Molly Ringwald monologue from 1980s' John Hughes.

Well, I happen to like Molly Ringwald. And I have a ripped-up pink skirt that I bought for cheap at Target and it's lasted me three years and someone always comments that it reminds them of Sixteen Candles. And for the first time since I was three-years-old, I don't have any wearable blue jeans with holes in the knees.

I don't know how to analyze that. And I just watched Annie Hall and it's made me very neurotic and I don't have anyone to talk to right now because there is chaos in the desert and children hitchhiking back to their hometowns and all my friends have been called out to hike and to work, leaving me behind with my stupid third and final dentist appointment for my ninth and tenth final cavity fillings (which may or may not be necessary, according to friend Drew's latest theories of dental fraud).

So I just want to say that I've had to say goodbye to old friends this month. Friends I bought at Rexburg's Rags-n-Tans' Silver Jeans outlet all the way the hell back in the fall of 2000, my freshman year of college. Yeah, man. They're that old. They've been through so many first kisses and sand dune bonfires and Jackson Hole retreats.....and I remember when the holes were first getting formed I got kicked out of Brother Olsen's Spanish 320 course but I cried so he let me stay....... I had other pairs of holey jeans....one I had to retire when I religiously couldn't show my thighs any longer (luckily that retired my overall shorts, as well). Another pair I stopped wearing in 2006 because the hole in the crotch just couldn't be safety-pinned shut any longer. A more recent pair finally wore out on my backside....the fabric just got too thin and you can't sew patches onto fabric like that.

This was my last pair. The pair that Atsuko Sensei told me was a work of art every time I wore them to Japanese 3010. I used to wear tube socks with red stripes on the top because you could see them peeking up through one of the holes. It was my trademark. People shouldn't have trademarks. I don't believe in trademarks. I'm glad I don't have to have a trademark.

While I was making pottery with hippies in Boulder, Utah, a roommate in Arizona saw them in the garage. It was one of the only things in that garage that wasn't hers so I can understand her apparent desire to try them on. Seriously, the garage is filled with her things...she makes me believe that it's possible for people on Gilligan's Island to bring so much crap with them for a three-hour tour. She has thirty years worth of built up baggage out there that she only picks up when she has to move to a different apartment (approx. every three-to-six months). So I can see why she'd want to try my pants on. I can understand they were on her marked territory.

What I can't understand is why she'd choose to do lunges in them. My last pair of holey jeans. She tried to give me a high-water pair of Sevens jeans she bought at Savers, possibly clearance at TJ Maxx, as a replacement for my Rexburg 2000 Silvers with the flared bottoms. I didn't even try her jeans on. It's like trying to replace my dead dog with a trendy new chinchilla. Hells no. I went to my room and lay my pants on the bed with me and we cried together. We wept for all the times we'd had and all the times we'll never have. Then I threw on my swimming suit, put on my pants, and ran around several neighborhoods jumping into pools and rolling around in grass. I plan to make one of those denim picnic blankets out of all my pants because I can't bear to chuck them out.

I'm trying to decide if I should grow out of holey jeans or keep falling to my knees in prayer for a next batch. I'm sure I'm just being dramatic, but I'm a single woman in my later-20s, in a limbo period between commitments, and I don't have a pet or a boyfriend. I'm afraid I need an outlet and right now venting about my lost jeans feels good. "And though you want them to last forever, you know they never will....and the patches make the goodbye harder still." Goodbye, my pants. It's been real--true and blue.