Thursday, July 25, 2019

Made Comfortable

Wear and tear.
That's what I used to call it before I went to college and got really smart about physics and started calling it "entropy." When I was a mere slip of a lad, new Levis needed to be worn for several months before they approached anything that could be described as comfortable. Trying these pants on left one with the rough experience of walking around with your lower half encased in dark blue tin. Then someone had the clever idea to pre-wash jeans so that initial Tin Man experience could be ameliorated. This also meant that you had to carry around two sizes in your head: pre-washed and straight off the press. This was a time in which showing up with those telltale creases on your indigo leg coverings that barely bent at the knee meant you would be ridiculed for not spending the extra money to have someone wash your jeans a bunch ahead of time.
I understand now they wash them with stones. And tear holes in the knees, and elsewhere, just to make sure that you don't get mistaken for someone wearing brand new jeans. "Are those new jeans?" to be clear, was a point of ridicule not admiration.
I had a similar experience back in the olden days buying shoes. It was expected that any new shoes would be less than comfortable for a period time. This period of time was what I came to understand was the "breaking in" period. In order to get those Buster Browns to moderately conform to the shape of ones feet, you would need to spend some time walking around in them. This was especially disconcerting since these were nominally "Church Shoes" and would not get the kind of use that a pair of Keds might. This meant that most every Sunday morning brought the ritual torment of lacing up those instruments of torture. I understand that Jesus used to walk around barefoot, but that's my cynicism shining through my religious conviction. It was the shoes. It had to be the shoes.
And certainly we expect all our clothes to deteriorate over time. That is the function of the lint filter on your dryer. I assume that over time I have lost several shirts and pairs of pants to the steady disintegration of laundry. Cleaning the lint from the filter and knitting them into new socks might help limit some of this entropy.
Wear and tear.

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