a tale of pants

i was on a bike ride a few days ago and noticed, on the same sidewalk, a very old man with his pants almost up to his shoulders and a kid with his pants almost down to his knees. i started thinking about the height of pants, age, and what they have to do with each other, and decided that they are most definately connected. intimately at that.

it all starts when you're born. diapers can really only sit in one place, which is right at the hips. not only that, but aside from the ocassional fumbling babysitter, your mom was pretty good at sticking that diaper right in the same spot every time. even when she had to change you on the floor in the airport to the disgust of everybody around you. as an average kid, you don't start dressing yourself until you're around 5 or 6, at which point, you are probably wearing your sister's hand me downs, which are a little too small to fit on the waist, so where else can you wear them but up a little too high. even when your mother buys you nice clothes that do fit, they fit "the right way" and sit somewhere around belly button height. around the age of 10, you start getting your own clothes, and you dress yourself nicely for class, hoping that the pretty girl that you just started noticing last week might think that you look "nice" and might want to "hang out" with you a little bit more. now here's where things really start going bad. as soon as junior high hits, the pants height takes an alarming dip in the negative. why, i can't explain. i did it myself, and still don't know why. wearing those pants as low as possible without showing the goods was definately the fashion, and making sure that you had some good looking boxer shorts was just as important as keeping your shoes clean. after you realize how stupid that stage is, there comes high school and then college, where the pants return to somewhere around waist height. this is mostly likely because you've been wearing the same pants since junior high (in my case) and you've grown a little bit, and that's just where they fit. other times, it's because that hot girl in your class (not in my case) seems to dress nicely and you think if you dress nicely too, she might notice you. not usually the case, but you try anyways. once you're out of college, you have to go get a job, and the pants rise just above the waistline as you try to impress your boss to get that all too important raise/bonus/extra day off work. the next milestone is the ubiquitous mid life crisis, where, along with your dignity, the pant line dips a little bit as you strive to be cool and hip and fit in with your kids, who at this point are probably going through the lowest pants-point in their lives at the same time. after you realize that not only is your wife not impressed, but neither is your boss or kids, so you bring 'em back up slowly over the next couple of years. at this point, resistance is all but futile. from that point until you die, the pants rise almost exponentially until they're right up there next to your pocket protector. below i've included a handy reference chart as well as a detailed (and heavily researched) graph to see where you stand next to the average male.

AND just so you can't say i never did anything for you, i fit that there graph with a quadratic curve with the equation y = 0.003x^2 - 0.1475x + 0.4082, so you can see where you should be wearing your pants. Myself, as a 21 year old, using that equation, should be wearing my pants at a height of about 1.3663 inches below the waistline. sounds about right. try it out!