Sweatpants

"You know the message you're sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You're telling the world, 'I give up. I can't compete in normal society. I'm miserable, so I might as well be comfortable.'"
- Jerry and George, Seinfeld, in "The Pilot"

I used to wear sweatpants every single day of my life except for Sundays.

This confession may come as a shock to you, seeming how the vast majority of you only see me in my present state as the guy nominated for "Best Dressed on Campus" (which, I didn't win, thank goodness).  But, it's the 100% truth. I would wear sweatpants to school (this is when I wasn't homeschooled). I would wear them to the camp where my parents worked. I would wear them on social outings. I would wear them to T-Ball practice. The only time I wouldn't wear them was on Sundays, when I would insist on donning a full suit and tie. Every Sunday. To church. I also wanted braces, and freckles, and big glasses (which, my parents eventually bought me in the form of safety goggles...but that's another story).

I was a peculiar little boy.

I was on the T-Ball team in Medford, Wisconsin - the place where I lived. One particular year, when I was 5 or 6, there were these two nice ladies, probably in their 20's, who decided to coach the team. I liked them, they were nice, except they had a very strange propensity to yell the phrase "Hustle Hustle Hustle!!!!" whenever they felt like it, which was quite often. The first several weeks of practice, I ignored it. I had no idea what the words "Hustle Hustle Hustle" meant and the rest of the kids on the team didn't seem to either. One day though, I decided to find out. You see, on that day, the people who were supposed to set up all of the equipment for practice hadn't done their job, therefore the two lady coaches decided it would be our job to set up the equipment. Unfortunately, the shed where all the equipment was held was located on the complete other side of the baseball diamond AND the high school football field where we practiced. The lady coaches explained this to us nicely and then burst out yelling "Hustle Hustle Hustle!!!!" Everyone on the team started running across the field.

Except me.

"What does hustle mean?" I asked one of the lady coaches. She looked at me. Looked away, yelled "Hustle Hustle Hustle!!!!" again to the people who were beginning to slow down from utter exhaustion, and looked at me again. "It means you have to run really, really, fast. Now HUSTLE HUSTLE HUSTLE!!!!!" I jumped and started running. Except, my sweatpants were particularly loose that day. (I'm not entirely sure why I wasn't wearing a team uniform...but oh well).

Kersplat. (It had rained the night before). I hit the muddy ground with my face. My sweatpants stopped before my little body did, so I kinda slid partway out of them. It wasn't pretty, but thankfully everyone else on the team had already reached the shed and were too busy trying to hit each other with the T to watch little Matthias have a wardrobe malfunction.

Needless to say, that was the day I stopped wearing sweatpants to practice. I still wore them everywhere else for a several more years until I discovered that jeans weren't as horribly awful as I thought ("my gosh, these are actually comfortable! and they look better than sweatpants too!"). Now, I don't even own a single pair. Thank goodness.
-Matthias

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