We were going to go to the Folk Festival this weekend: we had tickets and everything. But as the date loomed closer, the weekend got more and more crowded with other important and inflexible things. Eventually it seemed like we would not be enjoying the folk festival as much as we would be trying to cram some of it in between other things, just so that we wouldn’t have wasted our money on the tickets.
Finally we came to our senses and decided to sell our tickets, and as luck would have it, a friend and fellow blogger wanted to buy them. On Friday I headed off to work with the tickets in my pocket and a plan to meet my friend at a coffee shop where we would seal the deal.
I thought it was going to be a lucky day because I saw a bunny AND a groundhog on my way to work. But you know how you have a pair of unlucky jeans in your drawer that don’t fit quite right and aren’t very comfortable and you don’t realize it until you’re halfway to work? I was wearing those jeans on Friday. They were loose and droopy and I had to keep pulling them up and I told myself that after work I was going to take those jeans out of circulation. (Usually I just throw them in the wash after wearing them once, but then they tighten up and the next time I wear them they feel okay for the first hour or two, which is how they keep tricking me into wearing them even though they are bad, bad jeans.)
So. All day long my pants kept getting loser and loser, and by lunchtime I was walking around downtown holding them up. I even stopped at Cleo’s in the L’Esplanade and tried on a pair of replacement pants at lunchtime, but they were too long.
“How’d those pants work out for you?” asked the sales clerk.
“Just fine,” I replied, “Except they’re too long.”
“Oh, but they’re the Petite size – they’re the shortest one we make!” she exclaimed, as if it were not mathematically possible to have legs shorter than Cleo’s shortest pants.
“They’re too long,” I repeated.
“Well,” she said dubiously, “You could get them hemmed.”
Well you know what? Screw that. I don’t get stuff hemmed. I’m five foot one and three quarters, which is short but not freakishly so, and I will buy my pants from stores that make clothing for people in the normal range, like me. Eddie Bauer, for example, makes jeans for people who are five one and three quarters, and they’ve managed to stay in business all these years.
It’s a pet peeve of mine. Clothing manufacturers make regular and petite sizes. Petite sizes are for women 5’4″ and under, which is ridiculous because the average Canadian woman is five foot three and a half inches (and 153 lb, incidentally). (Also incidentally, the average Canadian man is five foot eight and a half, and 182 pounds. Source.)
So women of average height have to wear either petite sizes or high heels. At Cleo’s, I have to wear petite sizes AND high heels. Either that or I have to go to the trouble and expense of getting my brand new pants hemmed before I wear them. I won’t do this at the best of times, let alone while I’m standing there manually holding my unlucky pants up.
Anyway. I did not buy the too-long petite pants at Cleo’s, and I went back to work. Around mid-afternoon I ducked out of the office to meet my friend to exchange tickets and money. That’s when I reached into my big, loose back pocket and discovered it was empty. My folk festival tickets were gone.
What followed was the usual checking and double-checking and triple-checking of all possible pockets, the mental re-tracing of steps, the physical retracing of steps, and, ultimately, the acceptance of the fact that the $160 tickets had indeed worked their way out of the loose baggy pocket of my unlucky jeans and fallen on the ground, and they would remain lost forever.
I just hope someone found them, and was able to put them to good use. I hope it was someone who desperately wanted to go to the Folk Festival but couldn’t afford it, preferably a wonderful person who deserved some unexpected good luck. It makes me feel better to believe this than to believe, for example, that they fell under the steamroller in the Bank Street construction zone.
You might be thinking it was careless of me to keep something of value in my back pocket, but on a typical day my back pocket contains my hipster PDA, my credit card, my bank card and my library card, and I never lose any of this stuff. That’s because my pants usually fit. (My bank card is shaped exactly like my bum, by the way.)
That sucks. When I lose precious things, I also like to imagine that it’s because it was time for someone else to have them. It doesn’t really help, but it kind of does.
I’m 5’4″ and size 16/18. I have serious issues finding jeans because no one around here sells petites! And sometimes, the petites are too petite! I agree re. hemming – why spend all that money then spend more to adjust a brand new item. It makes no sense, and I’ve had more than one sales clerk recommend this to me, too.
Sorry about the tickets. I hope someone good got them, too. Or, do you think they fell out in Cleo’s and the clerk found them?
Must be a family trait…I carry everything in my pockets too. Love finding cash on the bottom of the washing machine.
What did you do instead of the festival?
Your bank card is shaped like your bum? Must must be a very cute bank card!
I will gladly hem some pants for you anytime. Just don’t tell 4D I made you that offer or I will get a boxful of his mending stuff at my door!
I too sincerely hope it was a couple of sweet hippie folks that found your tickets.
You did call Cleo’s, right? I keep thinking they might have fallen out when you were trying on the pants…
That is too bad! But I like your rationale about someone in need of luck finding them. I like it so much that I plan to use it the next time I ever lose something.
BTW, hemming jeans is incredibly easy if you have a sturdy sewing machine (a lightweight one can’t handle the seams) – I’ll show you how some day. On the other hand, I am 5’2″ (probably less now that I am “older”) and I can buy pants at Marks Work Wearhouse that I don’t have to hem.
I have the same problem except im 5’6″ and normal length pants are at least 4″ too long for me. It’s crazy. Luckily my mom taught me how to hem and I have a sturdy machine so thats what I do. Good luck with the pants and I hope someone worthy found your tickets.
Oh wow, I’m just shy of 5’2″ also. It sucks to be short but nearly everyone in my French-Canadian-American family is short. My brother is the youngest member of our generation and he is the tallest at 5’11”. And I’m the shortest, actually. Shortening pants is just a fact of life for me. Sometimes I don’t bother to shorten them and wear them a little pouchy at the ankles.
Too bad about the tickets! It’s freaky how these things happen sometimes, but I’m so glad it wasn’t your credit card!
Oh that is bad luck!
I’d call Cleo’s and see if they got dropped there.
I’m shocked that you are taller than me! I’m 5’1″ exactly…I think I’ve shurunk through spine curvem always carrying babies on my hip!
bad luck about the tickets
Didn’t you just lose some train tickets recently, too? Maybe the universe is telling you that you’re not meant to own tickets? Anyway, that really bites. I’m way too paranoid to ever keep anything in my pockets. If someone very kind found festival tickets is there some place to turn them in? Maybe you could check there?
*sigh* Oh, for pants that could be hemmed to fit… Usually, the tall size fits “up to 5’10″… and since I am 6’0″, it usually doesn’t cut it. I did score some lime green linen pants at a thrift store that were (praise be!) about 2″ too long and a skosh too big, so I used the extra leg fabric to make a better waistband et voila! I love thrift stores, especially when I am able to find long pants!
But it does suck to have to alter clothes before you can wear them, and I’ll never do it if I’m paying full retail.
(really?? 5’3”?? I must be a freak… I actually had my new doctor ask me if I had Marfan’s syndrome at my first appt. odd.)
I also have some unlucky pants that throw concert tickets onto the ground. The first time was when I was walking to see a band called The Islands and my ticket fluttered out of my back pocket and onto Preston Street. Luckily, by the time I got to Somerset, I realized the ticket was gone and retraced my steps back a few blocks. I saw the ticket, but it was windy and I had to chase it for another few blocks. Eventually caught it, but was late to meet my friend for dinner.
The same pants ejected tickets to a punk show in Las Vegas and those were lost forever in the confusing-carpeted casino. Luckily, the friend I was with spotted another friend who had extra tickets and he was able to give us replacement tickets.
But I never put anything important in that back pocket again.
J.
Hey-i feel your pain on pants not fitting BUT i have the opposite problem. AT almost 5 ’10, i have the legs of a 6’2 person……what’s with ‘long/tall’ inseams being 32…… AND why aren’t there just sized or sections or stores for tall people that weigh average. Everything is plus or petite or ….why not just make things that fit all? Why do men’s pants come in so many more inseams than womens? See what you’ve done? NOW you’ve got me started:)
Lo
I did check at Cleo’s, and nobody had turned in the tickets there.
Woodsy and Julia – thank you very much for your generous offers. I might just take you up on that. (But I still prefer to take my business to stores that sell pants with legs the same length as mine.)
Deb, how come you carry everything in your pockets? What do you carry in your purse?
Sheila, I actually don’t mind being short except for the pants and when I can’t reach the Bran Buds with Psylium on the top shelf of the grocery store. I’m quite comfortable from my vantage point of five one and three quarters.
Mudmama, are you SURE you’re only five one? I always thought you were a bit taller than me. (Maybe you have better posture or something.)
Nursemyra, I just hope I don’t find them now that the festival’s over.
XUP – you’re right, I forgot all about the lost train ticket last month. It wasn’t in my back pocket though – it was supposedly in the secret secure pocket of my knapsack.
Jenny, you’ve turned the problem on its head. I never before thought about what tall people do when the pants are too short. You’re right, that’s even worse than pants being too long. I’m sorry.
Jo, you must have been destined to go to those shows!
Lola, you’re absolutely right. Men’s pants come in combinations of waist/inseam measurements. Why can’t women’s pants come that way?
Ouch. As a fellow keeper of things in pockets, you have all my sympathy. I try and keep anything I can in the front pockets though, since those are less likely to loose things. Either that or in the zip pockets of my “hiking” trousers. They may not be the fashion statement of the year, but they are comfortable, dry quickly when wet and have lots of closable pockets.
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[…] Anyway, this year’s Folk Festival is working out so much better for us than last year’s Folk Festival. […]