white pants

I own one pair of white pants. I cannot remember at any prior time in my life owning a pair of white pants. I bought these only and specifically for my choir uniform a couple years back, having seen pictures of myself on stage in a tragic and too-short skirt. Nobody needs to be distracted by their own chubby knees while singing and clapping and trying to focus on the audience. I quit that choir two years ago, but never got rid of the pants. Or of the horrid itchy choir orangy-red polyester shirt, for that matter. 

Lately, due to severe wardrobe limitations, I've taken to wearing my white pants off stage. The first time was in desperation after shopping for a week for a white dress to wear to Diner en Blanc. I finally settled for just buying a white tunic and pulling the pants out of the back of the closet they've been collecting dust in. 

It turns out, my white pants are flattering - slimming, sharp, perfect length, perfect shape. For so long I've associated them with the hideous choir shirt I wore them with that I'd never evaluated them on their own. For even longer (maybe my whole post-pubescent life) I've believed that only skinny girls should wear white bottoms. Even my khaki linen shorts are pushing it. 

You know that feeling you get when you put on a piece of clothing and instantly you feel taller, slimmer, longer, stronger, fitter, and more chic? That's what these pants do for me. There's just something inherently cool about wearing white pants - they are a luxury afforded only to those who don't have to work too hard. They are sassy and reckless and somehow daring. Wearing white pants all day and not get them dirty is a challenge I find decadent - it requires an awareness of what I am near, what I am sitting on, what I am eating that is entirely self-indulgent. 

Yesterday, at the end of a two-week road trip vacation, most of the clothes in my suitcase were wrinkled, a touch stale, some had lingering smoke smell from the wood fire in our cabin in Jasper. They lacked freshness. But I pulled those white pants from the bottom of the suitcase, and the wrinkles fell out of them before we even left the hotel room. Sitting in the car all day, I felt fresh and light. As it turns out, somewhere along the way I sat in something that left what looks like a bite-mark on my bottom. I guess that's just part of the white pants mystique.