Who Wears the Pants in Nezu's House?

Jeans. The American national dress. Jeans have transformed the color blue from a primary into a neutral that goes with everything. Jeans have migrated from the gold mines and cattle drives of the Old West, through Dust Bowl cotton fields and the fruited plains and amber waves of grain of the heartland, gone to college with beatniks and hippies, been the uniform of Silicon Valley and the computer revolution, and made it all the way into Wall Street board rooms. When conservators cleaned the giant American flag at the Smithsonian, the original Star-Spangled Banner that inspired Francis Scott Key to pen our national anthem, they found it contaminated with dust and lint including blue cotton fibers, presumed to have come from the blue jeans worn by many of the over five million annual visitors to the museum.

I remember the first pair of real jeans I had when I was four, and the fantastic white leather belt with a two-pronged buckle that went with them. It was 1971, and I was stylin! It's safe to say I have worn jeans my entire life. I feel comfortable in them, ready for anything. I feel at home in them. I've sledded in jeans, climbed Mt. Lassen in jeans, watched an Atlantic sunrise and a Pacific sunset in jeans. Done almost all my writing in jeans. Fallen in and out of love while wearing jeans. Made love while wearing jeans. When I am wearing jeans, I am myself.

( But for most of my adult life, jeans and I have had a sort of awkward little not-so-secret secret... )