Ventilated Jeans

So there was a time not so long ago when fashion dictated that a pair of jeans was not a jeans if it was not cut at some point, frayed was cool, faded was cool.

Therefore in case I have confused this with too much coolness in the face of a price tag. So in simple terms the jeans were deliberately cut for fashion before purchase and perhaps even to increase the purchase price.

So nowadays, times have changed, rather quickly for my slow-go middle aged mentality.

My boy through genuine wear and tear has a tear in a rather good fitting pair of jeans at the groin area. Ventilation is cool. Apparently not.

Apparently this means that I must get the credit card from its cob-webbed safe place of keeping, to pay rather ridiculous prices for branded goods. He thinks.

In my day and age a slice in the trousers was a reason for Mam to do a rather fetching patch and it was damn cool. And cheaper than buying a pair of non-branded jeans let alone a pair of branded jeans. By darn, we darned socks or at least Mam did.

I am holding firm that a patch is the best economic answer. A patch obviously not cutting it, to coin a phrase, in teenage cool that is to say his jeans in not going to be part of any family austerity programme.

My boy is about to enter a tantrum that I used to call a pout, but as an adult-in-waiting he sees this quivering of the recently-acquired-bass voice as a demonstration of manhood.

Its time for my "in my day and age" speech, a speech that will always be as welcomed as much as say a mobile phone in the Monastery vowed to Silence.

I pontificate with the threat of my non -use of a credit card, he knows I will eventually concede, I know he knows, he knows I know, the father-son bonding knows. There is a depth of knowledge known but not voiced, and in that void he will suffer the boredom of my voice on how things wer, how it should be, how it was for my father and how it was for his father before him and my great grandfather down t'pit. How the younger generation ~ him~ do not appreciate things like we ~the older generation~ do.

He is prepared to suffer a little, there is the balance now of when to perhaps hint at conceding.

By all things going nuclear- atoms are split - suffering is over.

Arbitration is needed, call in the Peacemakers, t..t...timing is everything. He is not prepared to suffer for his jeans.

I am prepared to wait to be appreciated for my wisdom, even if wisdom is symbolised in pocket-sized plastic and let Father-Son bonding be in need of some glue.

One day my son you too will make this speech to my grandson and equally forget that you wanted a brand new pair of jeans for the moral of this story is..... money does not grow on trees.