Fashion Risks

The other day, I sent a fifth grade boy to the office for dropping his pants. Not all the way down, mind you, just low enough that everyone could see his red and green boxer shorts. Everyone with the emphasis on the group of fifth grade girls in front of whom he was standing. This came after our principal had already asked him politely to pull up his pants and offered him a belt to alleviate the issue. Not comfortable with the attention from his principal, this kid waited the two requisite minutes between that first reminder and the moment when he decided he needed to return to his relative state of undress in front of me. This gave him just enough time to look at me, blankly, and ask the question that burns into my soul as an elementary school teacher: "Wha'd I do?"
To his credit and for the sake of my blood pressure, this little inquiry only lasted a few seconds, and he understood that I wasn't going to let him parade his undies about in front of the girls. Or boys. Or anyone. It was the next morning that I started thinking about the hazards of fashion. Girls who have been kicked out of school for short skirts. Boys and girls whose T-shirt slogans rocked the offensive meter. And now we have the hanging jeans and boxers. You can see them in the windows at Macy's. Why wouldn't this be appropriate on the school yard?
Suddenly I was transported back to my ninth grade Algebra class. I was sitting in the second row, fresh from my shower in PE, eager for the day's lesson. That's when Ms. Stiffler looked over at me and said, "I know. Grass doesn't grow on steel." It took me a moment to realize that she was addressing me. It took another moment for me to make sense out of what she was inferring. I had made the choice on the way out of the boy's locker room to leave a couple extra buttons undone on my mid-seventies polyester shirt. I was making a mild statement about my relative cool. I was being told by my math teacher that not only was it not cool, that she felt that it was embarrassing for me to show off my baby-smooth chest underneath that polyester shirt. If I wasn't embarrassed before, I was when the whole class turned to look at me. I hastily buttoned all but the top button and went back to being a nerd.
I wondered if that kid had a moment in the office to feel any of those same feelings.