A lesson in thrift store clothing

I love buying clothing from thrift stores. I have found many amazing things at thrift stores, generally for an amazingly low cost. My mother taught me to always wash my thrift store purchases, and I used to be revolted at the thought of Not doing so. Then one time I made a plan to wear a piece of clothing before I washed it. And that wasn't so bad at all, so now I basically do it all the time. If something is so in need of washing right out of the store, I am probably not likely to buy it.

One thing that slightly freaks me out about thrift store clothing is putting my hands in the pockets. And I may have realized that my hesitancy to just jump right in, with my hands in the pockets, is Not unfounded. I may have discovered that this very weekend, in fact.

Several weeks ago I bought some amazing pants. These pants are purple and comfortable and beautiful. One important lesson in thrift store clothing would be: if you see purple pants, buy them. That is not the one I am referring to in the title of this blog post.

Back to the purple pants though. They were a little too short for me (as are most pants in this world) but luckily they had a cuff, which could be undone and would make them long enough. They also had very wide legs, but I figured sewing them to make them skinny/boot cut width wouldn't be too hard. So I did just that this weekend.

I simply pinned the purple pants to make them approximately the same width as these red pants. And then I sewed the straight line. And now they are even more spectacular because they fit just how I would like them to.

But I still hadn't broken the ice as far as use-of-pockets goes. So I decided I better just put my hands in there because I didn't want to have pants that I could never use the pockets on. So I did it. Hands went in the pockets (knuckles first of course, because it is way less bad to touch a foreign object with your knuckle than your fingertip). Unfortunately I felt something in the right pocket, but it seemed to be just a tissue, so I pulled it out, and as I was grabbing I realized it was a bit more squishy than a tissue ought to be, and before I can even pull it into view my heart rate had increased to an abnormal level, and as I flung it to the ground I realized that it was not, in fact, a real worm, but just one of those fake worms they make for fishing.

Because the first activity I had planned for myself while wearing my new (used), purple banana republic pants, was, hands down, fishing.