Moment of frustration
Last year, I probably spent the better part of a day travelling to all the major stores here in Austin, looking for a pair of jeans. Just one pair, I'd have been satisfied with. One pair, with a 32-inch waist and a 36-inch inseam, in a decent color and in a decent style. That meant no tapered-leg or baggy nonsense. I wanted boot-cut. And not in bright blue.
Well the bright blue, turns out, wasn't even a consideration, because it appears, apparently, that my body type -- thin waist, long legs -- is not prevalent enough for even the huge, mass-marketed jeans manufacturers to bother with. Oh, I could find plenty of 36-inch waists. But 36-inch length? Only with the accompanying, aforementioned waists that are four inches too big.
This is why I hate shopping.
So I turned to this Internet thing I keep hearing about on the radio. I went to Levi's.com. Turns out they don't sell direct. So I surfed to each of the eight or nine stores they recommended. Anything in a length longer than 34? Nada. Thanks, guys, appreciate it.
Then I turned to the amazing powers of Google. Or, rather, Froogle. Aha! Success. I order two pairs of the 567 Low Rise Boot Cut -- one in a medium blue, one in a darker blue. And I wait. And I wait. And I get a call from the people saying that one of my pairs is backordered; would I like to wait, or should I just be content with the lighter blue pair? I sigh, knowing what this means: if I can only scrounge up ONE pair of jeans in my size, in a style and color that are moderately fashionable, then I'll be wearing this single pair of jeans until they wear out.
Is it too much to ask to have two pairs of jeans that fit, and that I would want to wear? Some variety?
Oy.
The situation is now much worse. The online source where I found that one pair of jeans now no longer carries them in my size. I'm pissed. Because you'd think that somewhere in this great economy, there would be some store that would carry something that falls within the same reasonable expectations that 99.99% of the population naturally has. I'm on the cusp between off-the-rack and custom-made. I'm not tall enough or rich enough or patient enough to justify getting my clothes custom-tailored. I'm in the freaking no-man's-land of clothes-buying:
- taller than the standard deviation cutoff that most clothing manufacturers employ to manage their cost/benefit return,
- far more in shape than the average tall guy, who, based on the availability of clothes featuring a 38-inch, 40-inch, or greater waistline, seems to be quite a bit big as well as tall,
- and I actually care about style.
Obviously, I need to make more money so I can afford to have my clothes made. It sucks being tall sometimes, and right now, I'm pretty pissed off about it. The world is made for the 99.99% of people who are shorter than me.
Or, I probably just have a bad attitude.
Do you find something comical about my appearance when I'm driving my automobile?
Update: It could be much, much worse. I could be the world's smallest man.
Update 2 (4/1/05): Aha! I stumbled across a potential answer while running across this humor site. I will call the number... and report back my results.
Posted by Matt at March 30, 2005 11:58 AM
