All it takes is someone to put an idea in my head and it can take me ages (sometimes years) before I can get it loose.
In response to yesterday’s post about German School Kid Fashions, the gorgeous and baby-upped (I know that is not a word, but it fits the language of the style we are discussing… besides, it makes me hip, slick and cool…right?…RIGHT!) Miss Global Librarian told a little story and it would be such a shame not to share it.
Mind you, I will never be able to look at those boy’s with the droopy pants in the same light again:
“When I worked as a public librarian in Kansas City (US), I worked in a gang neighbourhood. (They were not gangsta-wannabes. They were the real thing.)
I did not allow the droopy pants and gang colors in the library. Partially because library was neutral territory and I didn't want them fighting with each other. But also because I thought the look disrespectful and they should treat the library, its customers and its staff with respect. (I was well-known in the neighbourhood. And gang activity of any kind DID NOT happen on My Watch.)
I used to enjoy explaining to the young boys how the droopy pants thing came to be. See, in prisons, where young men are locked up for long periods of time and "anything goes," wearing droopy pants signals to the other prisoners that you are a "bitch" and your back side is "open for business." The young men would always pull those pants up quite quickly.
I really, really wish I knew enough Swiss German to explain this to the young men I see wandering about Zürich. If those silly white boys ever appeared in my old neighbourhood, they would get their asses whipped by the real gangstas.”
Just too good a story to let slide.
Have a good one, people!
