Trying to Put On a Tight Pair of Jeans

Trying to Put On a Tight Pair of Jeans

The emailed prompt of the day for March 14th which my writing teacher sends daily was “trying to put on a tight pair of jeans.” As often happens, I needed to start with a list before an idea caught on. Here’s my list.

Trying to put on a tight pair of jeans
…is like trying to put a marshmallow in a piggy bank.*
…is like pouring two quarts of water into a 1 ½ quart saucepan
…is like tying a Christmas package with a piece of ribbon cut just a little bit too
short
…is like putting the lid on one of those plastic refrigerator containers that you’ve filled all the way to the top. You know that when you mash down on that lid, something’s going to squeeze out.
…is unlike putting on a tight pair of any other kind of pants. Sweatpants will “give” on you. Of course, when you’re done, you’ve got a gap of skin showing at the top and the bottom, but at least you’re in there.
…is unlike putting on tight dress pants/slacks. With dressy slacks you can either fit into them or you can’t. Dress pants weren’t meant to have the crotch up next to the navel.

*This expression is not my creation. Larry says his father used to say it to describe sex after seventy. It seems to work here, too.


And then I remembered D’Laine putting on a pair of tight jeans one time when she was a teenager, and I had a "how-to" thought.


From watching my daughter put on skin-tight jeans when she was younger (something I would never do—I value comfort way too much), I can tell you that first you need to carefully put each of your legs a little ways into the appropriate pants leg, and then you need to immediately lie down, preferably on a soft bed, because otherwise the rest of this will hurt.

Keep one hand on the waistband so the jeans don’t fall off onto the floor, because then you’d have to start over, and once you start this, there’s no going back.

OK, now you’ve got yourself lying on the bed, holding on for dear life to these too-tight, just-right jeans. Slowly start inching the waistband up your legs, covering up more and more skin. This part should be easy, otherwise you’re never gonna get these suckers on. And I’m assuming you’ve already got your underpants on, if you wear underpants, that is. Underpants can leave a tell-tale line when you’re done, but your crotch will thank you for them.

Now, you’re lying there wiggling and tossing and turning and inching those jeans up toward your waist. Everything is going good until you get to your crotch. Here you might want to pause and reconnoiter. You need to have every inch of your legs inside those jean legs, or else this is not gonna work. In fact, if you can pull the pants legs up a little bit onto your bottom, so much the better. You’re gonna to need every inch of fabric you can get.

Here comes the hard part. You’ve got both legs in the jeans. You’re lying on your back. Now you push your heels down into the mattress and raise your fanny off the bed a few inches—if you can. If you can’t, you can’t wear these jeans.

And then, as fast as you can, you snake that fabric up as far as it will go. Then you collapse for a minute until you get your strength and your breath back. I forgot to mention that you’d probably be holding your breath through this last part, and it can get pretty tiring in a hurry.

If you are in luck, the jeans are up near your waist, but they aren’t zipped or buttoned. I hope you thought ahead and got jeans that zip, because you ain’t ever gonna get them buttoned.

So now you’ve rested up a bit. For the coup de grace, you take in a big breath, blow it out as hard as you can, and suck that belly in farther than you’ve ever done before. And AT THE SAME TIME (this is the tricky part) you pull like crazy on that little zipper tab. You may have to get some help here if you’re not real strong.

Let’s say you got the zipper most of the way to the top. Now you stand up—on the floor, not the bed, and you jump up and down a few times. Again, at the SAME TIME you suck in that gut and inch the zipper up. There, it’s done.

But now there’s this roll of skin at the top. Looks like you’re wearing one of those kiddie swimming rings. So to get rid of that, you bend over and try to touch your toes about a million times, trying to stretch out the fabric. If that doesn’t work, you can do a bunch of deep knee bends. You might want to hold onto the side of the bed for that. By this time if you aren’t zipped up and mostly covered by those jeans, it ain’t gonna happen.

The last step is to ask your beloved “Do these jeans make my butt look big?”