Suspenders

When the founders of the United States declared their independence from England, the real purpose was to free us from all of the unnecessary vowels, and to allow us to perfect the language without interference from people who don't know the first thing about the English language.

 

I first introduced this topic a few years ago, and the last post was made to it the following day, I think, so I'd like to reintroduce it. I could be wrong, but I strongly suspect that many of you, probably the majority, have never lived in a place where suspenders were viewed as anything other than something that farmers and strange old men wore. In my twelve years in California, I don't remember ever seeing anyone wearing suspenders. I wasn't particularly looking for it, but I think I'd have noticed.

In Texas, some of the farmers wore suspenders while they were at work, but most of them wore coveralls instead. Suspenders weren't particularly common.

When I moved to Maine, I found more people wearing them, which perhaps shouldn't have been too surprising because the northern half of Maine is very much like the UP of Michigan, where they are seen more often. Even then, very few kids or young people wore them. The reason for this has to do with fashion sense, I suppose, but there is also the fact that most kids and young adults don't even have to wear a belt if they don't want to.

Until I was in my late forties, I could wear jeans with or without a belt and have no trouble keeping them up. As a paramedic, I could strap a fair amount of weight onto my belt and my uniform pants would still stay up. However, at some point, either in my late forties or early fifties, my body changed. Whatever part of my anatomy was responsible for holding my pants up disappeared, and if I have to carry something requiring both hands, there is a genuine threat of my pants falling off. As I have said in an earlier post, that has happened, although not in public.

In response, I tried suspenders, which were not something that I had worn before. Perhaps when I was very young, I may have had suspenders for use with hand-me-downs that didn't quite fit, but I don't remember having had any and don't think that I did. If so, I am pretty sure that I only wore them around the house or on our property.

Suspenders do the job, although I soon found that the most common kind, the ones with the clips, have a habit of unsnapping if I bend over to pick something up. The ones that attach directly to my pants work much better.

I am not a particularly fashion-conscious person but I am not entirely comfortable wearing suspenders in public, although I don't so much mind wearing them around Millinocket, where I know many of the people I am likely to come across and don't care about the others, but I wouldn't wear them to Washington, DC or to a lot of other places.

 

Around the house, I'll usually wear short pants or sweatpants, both of which are pretty secure. However, sweatpants don't do so well when they are wet, as they get heavy. Also, my wife hates it when I wear sweatpants too often. So, when I am on my land up north, shoveling snow, or otherwise likely to get wet, I'll wear jeans (or other pants) and suspenders, and I do have a couple of pants with some elastic on the waist that will stay up okay.

 

Suspenders with sweat pants, no I haven't tried that yet.