Requiem for shorts.

[mrissa]

My shorts bit the dust this morning. I don't know what kind of cheap crap it is they sell at Banana Republic, that it only lasts sixteen years.

My godfathers bought me these shorts the summer I turned 12. That means that these shorts predate every single person on my friendslist in my life. They were originally a light sage green, just basic twill shorts with pockets. They went with a white T-shirt and a peach vesty thing. The T-shirt wore out in a couple of years, and I started refusing to wear the vesty thing after about a year. (I am not a vest girl.) But the shorts, oh, the shorts have seen me through moving back to Nebraska from Kansas, through junior high and high school and college and abortive attempts at grad school and adult life apart from institutional education. I didn't wear the shorts when I went to meet scottjames in the park to hang out for awhile without the phone or adults, but I could have been. I wasn't wearing the shorts when seagrit told us we were going to have a niece, but I could have been. I'm pretty sure I was wearing them when I went to "Contact" with steve_dash_o and the rest of our summer research cohort in Ohio. They have been a staple of my summer life for more than half of the years I've been alive.

And now -- well, twill can only withstand so much. They had turned kind of an indeterminate, very pale grey-green. They were soft. They were comfortable. They were mine. But the seams were starting to go because the fabric was losing structural integrity, and I thought of resewing them, but the rest of the fabric was losing structural integrity, too.

Farewell, shorts. I will miss you. I'm not sure how I'll know it's summer without you.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am 5'6". I got to this height when I was 10, and then I stopped, apparently permanently. The years between 10 and 12 were the years of weight redistribution (with slight gain). And here I am -- not exactly the same build as I was at 12, but substantially the same. Being an early bloomer has its drawbacks, but in the "keeping comfortable clothing around" department it really can't be beat.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, the Puberty Fairy is the one who brings the growth hormones in my family, too. My best friend from the fifth grade still sometimes tells the story of "the weekend mrissa got boobs" that year. I was routinely mistaken for much, much older when I was 10. I think this is part of why it's surprising to me that people mistake me for younger now: I'm not used to looking younger, I'm used to looking older. That's how it works. I got over expecting to be tall sometime around late high school, and Gustavus put a bunch of nails in that coffin (nothing like a Minnesota college with ties to Sweden to make a girl feel petite!), but apparently the rest of the self-image gap hasn't caught up yet.

They did wonder if I'd be a six-footer, not just because I was 5'6" and had grown six inches in six months (growing pains OWIE OW OW OW), but because my great-aunt Jeannie had done exactly the same thing, and she'd grown another six inches when she was 13. So there was precedent. But apparently I was done.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

You developed breasts over a weekend? Holy cow. (Is her story funny or just embarrassing to you?)

Alicia was a friend from childhood and I do recall that she, too, had started to develop early--very tall by the fourth grade and starting to get busty. I don't recall her liking the situation much at the time. We lost touch by the sixth grade so I don't know what ever became of her.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

His story is amusing to me mostly for the tone of voice in which it's told. It's this nearly-religious awe: "We left school on Friday and she didn't have 'em, and we came back on Monday and she did, so I looked down her shirt to see if they were real, and they were." Last time I heard him relate this to someone, he was 26, but he still sounded like the ten-year-old kid.

But yah, it was pretty much that fast. For awhile my mom couldn't keep me in bras -- she'd measure, and by the time she'd made it to the store, gotten home, and washed the silly thing, I'd have grown out of it.

It wasn't a lot of fun. I liked adults treating me as though I was more grown-up, mostly, but sometimes it was scary, and it made the other kids I knew extremely uncomfortable. And there were some moderate early bloomers in my class with me in Omaha, so I was on the far end of the bell curve, but there was at least a bell curve. In sixth grade down in Kansas, only two girls in my class wore bras at all. It was really pretty awkward. And I was pretty awkward -- having leg and hip and arm and breast where there was nothing before is hard to coordinate.

[landofnowhere]

Wow... I'm 20, and the shorts that I got when I was 13 are starting to wear out... although I think my running/athletic shorts from that age are still good, although the amount I've used them has varied rather over time... I also have a tie-dye (not actually tie-dyed, tie-dye-printed, which is why it hasn't faded too much...) T-shirt I got at about the same time (not the oldest shirt I still wear, though) which I have the same sort of connection to, and I remember many of the things I've done in it... unfortunately it's getting a hole in the front...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sic transit gloria tie-dye.