The Inseam Incident…

We go to these cleaners that are located just down the street from our house in the HEB Shopping center at Cross Creek (I know; I had no idea it was called Cross Creek either). Anyway, the folks there do fairly good work and the employees are generally friendly.

I have often been concerned that every time I go in and there is this one girl behind the counter, she has a really disinterested look on her face, almost to the point of rolling her eyes that I would even come in. I’ve told my wife several times that I think I am the victim of being stereotyped as a creepy middle-aged pervert or something. I mean, why else would the one girl not be friendly, when all the other employees are so nice?

Well, we may have had a break-through today. My wife texted me that I needed to pick up some stuff from the cleaners, so I went in with receipt in hand and waited while a nicely dressed gentleman, complete with blue-tooth earpiece waited for the girl to find his pants. As he waited, he occasionally chatted with his wife or mother or someone on the phone. It was really weird, as if he he just stays connected to the person on the other end and they trade occasional comments to one another. Unlimited minutes, I guess.

So the girl finds the pants and naturally, I start to move forward so I can hand her my ticket so we can get my stuff. Just then, the man says, “Wait just a second, we better take a look at these. They’ve been lost for two weeks; no telling what may have happened.“

So I’m thinking to myself that he is going to look for stains or something, but instead he grabs the pants and holds them up to his waist. Turns out they had been sent in for alterations. He looks at the girl, then looks at me, then states, “There is no way these are 32 inches, they are way too long.” I think to myself, “What say you go try them on and I’ll just pick up my laundry.“

The man then goes into some sort of rant about how they had been lost for two weeks and now, they clearly were not altered properly and by God, he had specifically told the other person they needed to be 32 inches long. As he said all this, the girl calmly walked to another counter, grabbed a tape measure and laid the pants flat on the counter. She then asked him how many inches he wanted the pants altered and he responded, “32 inches“. She then placed the tape at the top of the inseam and measured down to the very bottom of the pants leg. 32 inches, exactly.

The man then looked at her and laughed, saying, “What is this, a joke?” He then went on to tell her that you always measure from the top waistband of the pants down to the bottom of the leg. He even looked at me as if to get some encouragement.

I try not to get involved in these things, but I just looked at him and said, “Have you ever heard the term, inseam?” He looked at me like I was choosing sides or something and then started to babble on about how every fine clothing place he had ever been to, they measured the inseam from the outside pants leg starting at the top of the waist. So again I could not help myself and I said, “Okay, you know that there is about 12 inches from the waist to the bottom of your crotch, and they cut exactly 32 inches from there. If they cut 32 inches from the waist, that would put your cuffs just below your knees. Can you say Capri’s?“

The guy then muttered something into his blue-tooth device, and I suspect that was all the conversation he wanted from me. He then grabbed his pants and walked out saying that he would deal with the manager.

And with that, the girl at the counter suddenly smiled. And when she rolled her eyes at me, this time, it was to signify that the other guy was nuts. And I went home and told my wife that we have had a breakthrough in the laundry situation.

Ya gotta like that.

Capri Update: Men Still Do Not Wear Them…

I thought we had established this rule before, regardless of how European you feel, men are not authorized to wear Capri’s.It isn’t that styles don’t change, and certainly, men have been known to wear all matters of shorts, Bermuda shorts, and even occasional high-waters, but blatant wear of Capri’s by men should be discouraged.

Important Fashion Update: Blogging Gets it Done…

No sooner did I post the report on the kid wearing his Mom’s Capri’s then my wife and I took off to meet my family for coffee before heading back to Texas. We stopped at a Lighthouse to take a few pictures and buy some mugs (which I’ll write about later). On our way out of the parking lot, who should we see but the reformed Capri wearer.Good job, Sport.

In other news, Delta Airlines heard our concerns about the portly waitresses on the flight from Atlanta to Daytona and subsequently recovered with a svelte crew for the trip back.I’ll provide some pictorial coverage of our fantastic little getaway to St. Augustine in the next few days. If you hate the Travel Channel, ignore me for a week, but come on back once I get the pictures and the stories out of my system.

Fashion Report: Men Do Not Wear Capri’s

I know I have mentioned this before, but sometimes things have to be repeated for the good of a well functioning society.

Men do not wear Capri’s. Long shorts are okay, and I know, there is probably some debatable line as to where shorts end and Capri’s begin, but let’s just use this as a quick rule of thumb: If your shorts are as long as your mom’s Capri’s, then you have Capri’s on my friend, and that is UNSAT.

There are plenty of beach supply stores here in Saint Augustine. Whatsay you and Mom get over to one pronto, and get your self a better fitted bathing costume, but preferably not a Speedo.

Thanks.

Mall Report: Apparently, People Still Shop Ingram Park Mall…

My wife and I had an important errand to run Saturday afternoon at 3PM but through the use of modern cellular communications, we were able to learn that we would not be needed downtown until closer to 4PM. Since we were already on the road and since I had a watch that stopped at 11 o’clock (it was closer to 2), I suggested we run into Ingram Park Mall and get a battery for the malciferated watch and kill a little time.

I really only have a handful of reasons that can get me to the mall these days. One is JC Penny’s. I like the slacks they sell and more importantly, you can get into Penny’s without going into the mall.

There is also a Security Service Credit Union outlet in the mall, so if for some insane reason you need to make a transaction that can’t be done at an ATM machine and it is after 5PM, you can go in there. Oh, and it is at the entrance to the mall, so technically, you don’t have to go into the mall.

But on this day, we would have to actually go inside the inner bowels of the mall where one must negotiate crowded spaces with undesirable elements of society – teenagers and such. The little kiosk my wife always goes to for watch and jewelry repair is on the lower level, I think where there used to be a Luby’s. I’m not sure if it is still there or not. Anyway, Sears is the anchor on that end of the mall.

So the guy there is extremely nice and recognizes my wife right away from the repeat business and takes a quick look at my watch and says he can fix it up in about 15 minutes. So, what this means is, we had to stay in the mall for another 15 minutes.

We did run into Kirklands and buy a picture but then decided that we better eat. Okay, in theory, the concept of the food court is a great idea. You take a dozen or so diverse restaurant outlets, put them in an open space, then provide shared seating so that people in the same party can eat different foods but sit together. The problem with this is, you have to sit with other people. Mall people.

If you ever have a poor body image, feel as though you are too overweight, have a bad complexion, don’t dress right, or are generally ugly, I’d like to offer up a little advice. Take a day trip to the food court and Ingram Park Mall some weekend and I promise, you will come out of there feeling like you could win the Miss Teen USA contest without having to know where America is on a map. You can ask my wife; I’m no fancy dresser and once, I was able to leave the house wearing white socks and sandals (much to the embarrassment of my wife), but after mingling with the people at this food court, I actually looked reasonable.

One word people: Mirror. Look at yourself in the mirror and if it looks good to you, you need to change. That’s right. If you are one of the men I saw at the food court yesterday who looked in the mirror at your Capri pants and said, “I look good being a man wearing Capri’s” you are no longer able to trust your own instincts. I know gay people who think that men who wear Capri’s look too gay to be seen in public.

Okay, so we were in the food court and my wife had a hankerin’ for Chic-Fil-A . No thanks. So while she was rounding up some of that, I saw this place that sells Philly Cheese Steaks. I looke over the menu and I saw that they also sell a Muffuletta.

The Muffuletta’s I know about come on a big round piece of bread and have some sort of olive salad on the bottom, then covered with the meats and cheeses. This one came on a sub bun, and there was no hint or discussion of olives at all. It was simply some fried salami or something with cheese melted on it. So, in the same way that Subway asks you what toppings you would like on it, I asked the lady for some black olives to go on my fried bologna sandwich.

Hell, I ought to be a sandwich creator because the end result was pretty darn tasty. I ate the entire thing without complaint, other than it wasn’t what I thought I was ordering.

In the meantime, my wife and I used the time to observe the unfortunate people put upon this earth to congregate in a place for the sole purpose of providing us reason to feel better about our looks. We aren’t shallow people, we just use the tools we are given.