From humble beginnings

“Boo pants!” I announce when I arrive home.

***

I had just come home from a job interview. Of course, it wasn’t a job I wanted. With my unemployment scheduled to expire in another few weeks, I couldn’t be choosy.

I slipped off my suit jacket (the tie had already been torn off during the drive home) and dropped trou right there in the living room.

I had been unemployed for six months. I spent whole days in front of the TV in nothing more than a T-shirt and a pair of lounge pants.

It was my apartment. I lived alone. Sort of. My former law school roommate sat on my couch watching television. He was staying in my apartment for a couple of weeks while he found a place of his own.

He was horrified. I stood there in my gray boxer briefs, triumphant. It had been so long since I wore slacks that they felt confining. And now they were gone. I felt great.

In that moment, a movement was born.

***

“Boo pants” is both a catchphrase and a description. It is an attitude and a product. It is a sentiment, a demand, and a celebration.

This blog celebrates “boo pants” in all their glory.

If this were a dictionary, there would be two definitions:

“Boo pants” /interj/ - an exclamation against the hegemony of pants. It celebrates that moment when your life truly becomes your own again, when you leave the pressures and demands of the world behind. Belts are shackles. Pants are the symbols of repression.

“Boo pants” /n/ - The “pants” or other clothes you wear on your lower extremities when you have “boo pants” moments. Generally marked by an elastic waistband. “Boo pants” include lounge pants, pajama pants, shorts, skirts, kilts, lingerie, underwear, nudity, etc.

There are not so much rules with boo pants as there are preferences and encouragements. Personality and comfort are encouraged. Ugly is encouraged. Soft is encouraged. Silliness is encouraged. Being unfashionable and out of season is encouraged. Being you is strongly encouraged.

DISCLAIMER: Of course, boo pants should only be worn in one's own home or some other very casual atmosphere (say, a friend's house belonging to one who encourages boo pants). Wearing boo pants in the wrong situation may cause you to be fired or arrested.

Besides, boo pants should be for you. Wearing them all the time (which, I admit, I did while unemployed) is not a way to go through life. Wearing them all the time diminishes the comfort level of boo pants and reduces your bold statement to “I'm lazy.”

In other words, wear pants when you must. It will help you savor the moments you don't have to.

This blog is about those moments.