Easily swayed

I was out this past week with a friend from California at dinner. He and I were discussing some things, and jean shorts were brought up, somehow. I told him that I hadn't worn jean shorts since I was 16, and that I didn't get them.

When I was 16, I spent the better part of my summers in cut-offs and teva sandals chasing children who were recently taken off their ridalin around outside. It was always an exciting choice-- which jeans deserved to be immortalized by scissors. Jean shorts to me are a time and a place that I could pull up in a capsule of time.

When I think jean shorts, I think my father gardening in 1991. I think being in middle school where whomever had the longest acceptable fray on their shorts was the coolest. I think about tourists and Middle America and the Gap.

My friend said he didn't understand the East Coast snobbery, because when he showed up freshman year of college, he wore jean shorts out on one of those first few awkward group outings where 30 18-year-olds do the same thing. He said he got made fun of something fierce for wearing jean shorts. I laughed at him AGAIN. Like I did, lo these many years ago. JEAN SHORTS? GIVE ME A BREAK!

I see hipsters walking around now with the knee length jean shorts. They look pretty cool on skinny girls with converse and a few tank tops, it's true. I am easily swayed by hipster nonsense like that.

So, I did something this weekend that I haven't done since I was 16.

I made cut-offs. To be like the hipster kids with the converse.

Only mine were old brown Gap chinos.

I rule.