I just remembered the greatest story when I was in the bathroom. I had left this old pair of shorts (now a floor-cleaning rag) in the shower, and it triggered a memory.

I used to have these shorts from Zellers that were on sale for like $3 or something, they were pretty small with an elastic waistline, and they looked like boxer shorts except the material was all wrong, as was the cut, and they had pockets on the back, which I’ve never seen on boxer shorts before.

So I was wearing these shorts the summer after I’d experienced a big growth spurt in my legs, which made me tallish and gangly. I was wearing my spring camp T-shirt, which hung down to mid-calf because the only size they had printed up was “tent”.

So I’m at Matt Cameron’s doorstep, we’d arranged to get together and play video games or something, and his mother answers the door, and then cups her hand over her mouth and says she’ll be back in a moment. I hear her call her
son, and then talk to him privately a moment before he comes to the door. For the first time, Matt didn’t just fling it open and invite me inside. Instead, he’s wearing an ear-to-ear grin and his mother is howling in the background.

“Umm… Jay… my mom wants to know… Uhh… before you come inside. Are… you wearing pants?”

And then it occured to me. On the two kilometer walk between our two houses, everyone who saw me must have wondered the same thing. With my blue-green t-shirt I almost looked like an escaped mental patient with little or no regard for lower body coverings.

I heard Marlon Brando once refused to act in a movie unless he could be naked from the waist down for the majority of it.

Brilliant.