Jeans, I Would Die for You (or Face Jail Time)

That’s me rocking some old school Hilfiger. … LOL.

Continuing my series on my interest surrounding jeans and the fact that I’m on vacation all week has created a perfect storm of delivering some differing content while I relax somewhere closer to the ocean! I hope you enjoy this continuing story about jeans.

A Change…

Fast forward a number of years later and I became enfatuated with jeans. But I didn’t want to be just a user nor a collector – I wanted desperately to be a connoisseur. And more than that I was a snob as I wanted a very specific kind of jeans every single time.

In my limited knowledge at that point in time there appeared to be only one really good pair of jeans and a secondary brand that was much more of a decent backup than anything else.

Tommy Hilfiger. That was it and in my Middle School years that was the jam. If it wasn’t TH then it wasn’t anything. And if my Hilfiger’s weren’t clean then I’d rock GUESS, but only if I had to.

I became so obsessed (as any young adolescent does over anything unreasonable) and so in love with the fit, the texture, and the experience of wearing jeans that it’s all I ever wanted to wear – I thought everything went well with them and even if they didn’t work well together I’d still wear them anyways.

The number one problem with Hilfiger jeans is the fact that they aren’t very cheap. To make matters worse I was living in Japan at the time and Hilfiger’s were definite imports with increased pricing to handle all those tarifs and taxes.

Goodness I hated international commerce.

And remember – it’s not like I was making bank as a Middle School kid (and no, I wasn’t dealing crack like a few of that crowd so I definitely didn’t have cash to burn).

I couldn’t afford them nearly as much as I wanted them and so I resorted to the only solution that was available to a kid who had no money but maximum motivation.

Thievery.

I became a thief and learned the fine art of the “five finger discount.” I learned every trick of the trade, from distraction techniques, to “stacking,” to even working with a team that consistented of some of my most trusted friends.

We became so good at it that I had every single pair of jeans that I would ever need – more than I could wear in a month, at the very least.

But it all came to a screaching halt on two fronts, the first being my parents who “somehow” figured out that their son had a ton of expensive merchandise and no way to afford it and we had a major confrontation that ended up with a lot of shouting and slamming of doors. The second came soon after when I had to outrun a mall cop to avoid heading to juvey.

Both of those events came within days of each other and I decided, right then and there, as I was gathering my breath after having run a marathon from blue uniformed men, that I would never steal another pair of jeans again.

But let it be known that there was a time when I would die for the right pair of jeans – or at least face jail time.