According to the Oxford Dictionary of English the word "pants" means "underpants" in England, but where I come from, south west Lancashire, it has, or at least had, the North American meaning, namely "trousers". We also had the concept of "short pants" which most young lads wore and which reached down to about knee level. Nowadays however, "short pants" seem to have disappeared and most kids apparently wear "trousers".
It was something which took place at around year three in the boys' grammar school in the 1960s, when it became apparent that more and more of one's class mates were coming into school wearing long pants, stretching all the way to the feet, which were apparently called trousers. One felt under significant social and psychological pressure to go along with this trend, as short pants were now labeling one as childish and a bit daft. I remember feeling quite reluctant to undergo this transformation, viewing long pants as somehow a conformist affectation, not to mention cissy looking. So I felt a right twerp and extraordinarily conspicuous when one day I travelled in on the no. 96 bus and traipsed into school, wearing long pants.
Of course, one soon acclimatized to this new way of being and the thought of wearing short pants became utterly ludicrous. It shows how malleable the human mind is and how conformity within one's own particular niche is such an all powerful aspect of our psychology.
The traumatic short-to-long-pants transition seems in retrospect to have been a right of passage, a symbolic acknowledgement of leaving behind childhood and shuffling on uncertainly into the dismal and scary world of adults.
No comments:
Post a Comment