Add blue jeans to the list of things that aren’t as good as they used to be.
When I was a kid, blue jeans were blue. Dark blue. Navy blue. And they were stiff.
Oh, they could be folded. One could, with some effort, stand or sit while wearing new blue jeans. But it was a workout.
Everyone at school knew when you had new blue jeans. It was not, as I seem to recall, entirely favorable notice. Of course, when you’re an adolescent, unless you’ve just scored the winning basket at the big basketball game, almost any notice is unwelcome, at least initially. Coming to school in a new pair of blue jeans was nothing like winning the big game.
Everyone else, in their more faded, softer blue jeans was far more comfortable.
There was an element of risk the first time a new pair of blue jeans were washed, too. My mother always wanted them soaked in a vinegar solution to hold the color.
That was just like parents: Darker jeans were definitely less cool than faded jeans; therefore parents instinctively favored darker jeans. Whether vinegar was used or not, however, anything washed with the new blue jeans was apt to turn at least a robin’s egg blue.
Faded blue jeans were celebrated in songs during the 1960s for a reason: By the time a pair of blue jeans were properly faded, they’d been lived in. Your favorite blue jeans were privy to your habits, good and bad, and even your secrets, if you had any. When the knees went, applying a patch was much more than garment repair; it was first aid for a friend.
The modern blue jean is neither particularly blue nor particularly stiff. Today the garment is marketed to us Baby Boomers as ‘relaxed fit’ and ‘stone washed.’
It turns out that relaxed fit doesn’t just mean that six of your high school selves could occupy those pants. And it turns out that “stone washed” is literally true.
On one of those “How Its Made” programs aired on the Science Channel I learned that new blue jeans are pre-washed in what amounts to giant washing machines. Instead of fabric softener sheets, actual stones — small boulders, even — are washed with the jeans to ‘break them in’ before they’re foisted on a lazy public.
Either the modern jeans consumer is too sensitive about the reaction obtained when wearing new jeans or too lazy to break them in as we did in the 1960s and 70s. Blue jeans fade now after being laundered only a few times — and why not? They’ve already gone through extraordinary wear (and even tear) before getting put on the shelves.
And every parent knows that pre-torn jeans are more expensive.
When a patch is required, as it will be all too soon on the modern blue jean, the item is not an old friend; it’s hardly even a casual acquaintance.
If anyone knows where old-style, sturdy denim jeans may be obtained, please let me know. Of course, the jeans would have to come in aircraft-carrier sizes….
From the Best of BoomSpeak, March 2011
Curmudgeon is a self-described dinosaur — an Ozzie and Harriet person living in an Ozzy and Sharon world. And sometimes it confuses the heck out of him.
We walk briskly down the beach. It’s December, freezing, thirty-something. My sneakered feet are bricks of ice. I ball my hands inside my mittens, try to match his strides. The tide surrounds us, recklessly spreading over patches of sand like liquid fingers of death. He hops over pools of surf like he’s sixteen again. I attempt an awkward leap on my good knee. He cheers and I’m delighted I stuffed that glossy brochure of Orchard Grove Senior Living in today’s trash.
You know there are things that baby boomers say sometimes that make them sound like old fogies (Whatever a fogey is. It’s from the French word fougeux and is similar to but unrelated to old codger).
It’s not your imagination. We, baby boomers, are spending an inordinate amount of time looking at our computer screens and cell phones. Back in 2019, Pew Research found the 60 and over crowd spent more than half their leisure time (about 4 hours and 16 minutes) in front of screens (mostly online videos). Currently, Nielsen reports that adults 65 and over watch YouTube on their TV twice as much as 2 years ago. Over-50 Americans spend 22 hours per week in front of a screen. One survey found that 40% of adults 59 to 77 say they are anxious or uncomfortable without access to their devices.
When I was a kid moving was exciting…an adventure. There was the busyness of packing and loading and unloading and trundling into new places. I’m older now. Quite a bit older. And the prospect of moving into a senior center is not so much exciting as inevitable while adding the hope of new adventures after my staid condo existence. I’m looking forward to an indoor swimming pool and an outdoor garden and a medley of exercise classes. Not to mention a broad swath of residents. The only problem is, they’re all old people. Huh! I should know because for many years I showed a movie once a month to these nearby-neighbor residents. I always prided myself as being a very open minded and generous young man by connecting with these senior tenants. It was a fulfilling experience. The only problem, now, is that I’ve evolved into the age frame of that long-ago audience, no longer the accommodating youngster leading post-film discussions. Huh!
Many great literary works make some reference to water. Rivers run through stories and generally represent the movement of life. The constant movement. Change.
