The Grandfather Dialogues: Two

Grandpa: What size is your waist?

Grandson: Twenty-two.

Grandpa: So why are you looking through a rack of size thirty pants?

Grandson: Baggy pants are in, Gramps.

Grandpa: The thing to remember about what’s in or out is that trends and styles are always in a state of change, son.

Grandson: How come you never say anything about how low I wear my pants? I know you don’t like it.

Grandpa: Coming from you, that’s an unusually astute observation.

Grandson: Then you admit that you don’t like my sense of style, but not enough to complain about it?

Grandpa: Well, I come from a place in time where men generally are in the habit of letting other men be free to design, define and refine their own style. As a matter of fact, when I was just a couple of years older than you, most young Black men were wearing our pants so high that we walked around with a constant wedgie, day and night. I’m guessing I don’t have to tell you what happened in the front of our pants as a result of pulling them up so high––not everybody liked to see one of us coming, if you catch my drift.

Grandson: How did the White guys dress back then?

Grandpa: The young White guys wore their pants then like young Black men do today. They thought their pants nearly falling off were cool. Some were worse than you––at least you wear drawers. Many White guys in the fifties didn’t have the decency to wear any drawers.

Grandson: You mean, they actually showed their crack?

Grandpa: Yeah, pretty much. There were a lot of them who thought that was real ‘cool’. They wore their shirt collars turned up, and their pants all but falling down in Chicago.

Grandson: Wow, I didn’t know that Gramps.

Grandpa: Sounds like we might need to talk about this kind of stuff more often.

Grandson: Wait here, I’ll be right back.

The young man turned and walked briskly back into the men’s clothing store. Three or four minutes later her returned.

Grandson: I exchanged that pair of size thirty for a size twenty-four.

Grandpa: You giving up cool for logic?

Grandson: Naw, I’m still cool. But I’m refining my cool, a little bit at a time.

Grandpa: Well nobody can do that better than you son.