Carol’s Column

Let it all hang out

IT REALLY is an upside-down world we live in.

Take trousers — they're ridiculous, absurd and sadistic.

Especially for men.

I couldn't help thinking this as I watched my youngest unmarried son scrunching my hopes for future grandchildren into a pair of jeans.

Oh, it wasn't that they were so tight that he had to lie on the floor and struggle with the zip.

No, they were any typical, scruffy 13-year-old's jeans. Baggy, saggy, worn and torn. The kind that, due to over-wear and lack of washing, stand up by themselves and allow their owner to leap into them.

It's the basic engineering principle of skirts and trousers that bothers me. The wrong people are wearing them.

Men should be in skirts and women in trousers. Women, by nature of their build, are streamlined and perfectly adapted to the confining cut of a pair of pants.

Men, on the other hand, are not.

I brought the subject up at supper that night, as we sat around the table eating the delicious dinner created and cooked by me.

“What is this?” asked Jamie, “dogfood?”

It's remarks like this that make being a mother worthwhile.

“Listen,” I said. Of course, nobody did. “I've had a wonderful idea.”

Liquorice-the-labrador pricked up her ears.

I tried again, a little more loudly. “Listen, I've had a wonderful idea.”

There was no reaction.

“I found R10 in the washing machine this morning,” I said brightly.

There was instant action.

“It's mine!” claimed five voices simultaneously — even Liquorice has learnt to speak on occasions such as these.

“Okay, I've got a wonderful idea,” I said to my now captive audience. “I've decided that it's ridiculous being conventional when convention is ridiculous.”

“Ma, spit it out,” said Ralph resignedly. “Tell us what's bugging you.”

“It's trousers.”

“Trousers?”

By now, I had everyone's attention.

“I hate to see you all in agony,” I said to the three male members of my family, “having to squash up the way you do every day.”

“She's mad,” remarked Jamie softly, but not softly enough, to his older brother.

“It's your welfare I'm thinking of,” I continued, “besides which, I want to have scores of grandchildren.”

“Ma, what are you going on about?” said Ralph.

“Look, it's simple. I've decided that it's stupid for men to wear pants. They just don't fit the male form. The Greeks and Romans were intelligent people — that's why they wore skirts.

“Besides, it's unhealthy for parts of the body to be perpetually cramped. In fact, it has even been suggested that some cases of male sterility are caused by wearing pants that are too tight.”

By now, they were all listening avidly, a sure sign of success in this family. Even my husband's spectacles were listening — they misted up with tension.

“Tonight, after supper, I'm going to sit down at my sewing machine and rustle up skirts for the three of you to wear tomorrow. And we'll just throw away all those stupid trousers that confine you so viciously.”

“Ma, if you think I'm going to school in a skirt, think again,” said Jamie. “Can you just imagine my teacher's face if I get jacked and he says: 'Lazar, bend over and lift up your skirt.' Aw, c'mon, Ma.”

Ralph agreed with him.

“What happens if you're riding a bike and the wind blows? Anyway, it's getting cold now, we'll freeze to death and Ma, if it's a matter of freedom and freezing or imprisonment and warmth — I'd opt for the latter every time.”

Funnily enough, it was my husband, usually a reticent, conservative sort of person, who agreed with me.

“You know, I think your mother's got a point,” he said. “Trousers are uncomfortable. They're illogical. I think I'd look rather dashing in a mid-calf pinstripe skirt.”

“You wouldn't wear one, would you Daddy?” said Nicky. She was horrified.

“Yes, why not? If your mother makes me a skirt, I'll wear it to the office tomorrow,” he said breezily.

So I did.

“You're not serious?” asked my spouse this morning when I proudly handed him his skirt.

“Of course I am,” I answered angrily. “I sat up the whole night making you a skirt in the name of freedom.”

“So who wants to be free?” he shouted as he got dressed hurriedly. He didn't give me a chance to tell him that, because he was in such a hurry, he'd omitted to put on his green and yellow striped underpants.

As he jerked up the zip of his elegant trousers — the inevitable happened.

I left the room quickly.

It's not nice to say: “I told you so.”

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