Forever in blue jeans -- Or -- Denim of the game

Omar the Tentmaker had set up his stall in the bazaar and Long Suffering Spouse suggested that we stop there and get me some new blue jeans.

Oh, they'd be new, all right. I probably haven't worn blue jeans for almost 20 years.

Why? Initially, I suppose, an exaggerated sense of gravitas. Ego: If I would be important, I must look important, too. What a load of road apples, eh?

As it turned out, I neither looked nor became important. Mostly I looked ridiculous, dressed in a jacket and tie coaching youth baseball at Bluejay Park. I tried to cite the example of Connie Mack to some of the kids. Kids? The parents had never heard of Connie Mack. They didn't even know that the Athletics had been in Kansas City, most of 'em, much less Philadelphia.

At least I didn't wear suits to the park usually. I wore Dockers and a sport coat.

Dockers, I would argue, were Levis for old, fat people. Like me. And maybe, in my defense, when I stopped wearing jeans, there really weren't jeans for people with, ah, shall we say, a mature figure.

And thus a habit was begun.

But now, in the fullness of time, and given the fullness or ripeness of the profile of the average Baby Boomer, Levis have begun to make jeans in the typical (read: enormous) sizes required by today's middle aged man.

Long Suffering Spouse had picked up on the trend though (of course) I had not.

And so we had our excursion to Omar the Tentmaker's Stall (OK, J.C. Penney's -- if you must know -- though that strikes me as far less romantic).

The kids have been amazed to see me clad in denim. I was amazed to see that the once all-American blue jean is now made in Lesotho.

Lesotho?