Friday, November 14 2008 @ 12:07 PM ICT

Contributed by: Anonymous

They may have our genes, but when it comes to jeans, our offspring are from an upscale galaxy far, far away.

If you doubt this, go shopping for a pair of jeans. Notice I didn’t say new pair of jeans because, as I was to discover, jeans don’t come in new anymore. They come in faded, pre-beaten up and holey. They also come in a multitude of similar styles, all of which are must-have.

In contrast, baby boomers come from an era where everyone owned a single pair of jeans, which were worn so often that, over time, they came to seem like a second layer of skin, only with pockets.

Eventually, of course, they would develop unpatchable holes, and one sad day, you would have no choice but to part with them, often emotionally.

Personally, I’ve always been way too attached to my old jeans to just toss them. Instead, I keep them stored in a trunk in the attic in a kind of cryogenic repose. My hope is that maybe someday, science will advance to the point where they can be brought back to life.

Anyway, in need of a new pair of jeans, I headed to the mall. Wandering into some super-trendy store, I was immediately greeted by several racks of jeans. Every pair had large rips in the knees and thigh area. Must be factory seconds, I thought; I probably can get them cheap.

Over in the men’s department, I found stacks of less distressed jeans, and after determining the difference between “regular fit” and “boot cut” and “low riders” – the latter being nothing but a marketing term for the style traditionally preferred by plumbers – I tried on a few.

They felt pretty good, and I liked the way they looked. That was easy, I thought to myself as I walked up to the register. Only then did I look at the price – $89. For jeans! I returned the jeans to the stacks and decided to check out the ripped jeans. They were even more expensive. It was at this point that I realized I had entered the retail equivalent of Bizarro World.

I tried a few other stores and then, on the way out, checked the mall’s high-end anchor store just for laughs. And laugh I did, at $180 jeans. I’ve owned cars that didn’t cost $180.