Parachuting Among The Gods

When MTV broadcast David Lee Roth doing mid-air splits on the video Jump, with his wild hair flying and big mouth opened in a grin like Animal from the Muppets, everyone’s attention was focused on the fantastic, zippery nylon pants cloaking his sultry shanks.  The buzz in the 8^th grade hallway was centered on ‘parachute pants’ from then on.  Jeff Perkis got them first - he wasn’t in the cool crowd, but his dad was a plumber and made tons of money.  Then Steve Musto and Carter Ash started whistling and clinking when they walked and they were gods when it came to girls liking them, so I ached with the ache of drowning for the same level of cool.

 We were not simply poor, we were mackerel and beans in the slow-cooker poor, rusty water and duct-taped windows.  But earnest pleading moved the powers that be and Mom shelled out $26.00 for some rubbery knockoffs.  I loved having all those zippers, but didn’t dare store anything in the pockets because it would ruin the profile, which, I need to add here, was less than flattering.  No one was kind enough to tell me that parachute pants were made for spindly heroin addicts to store their fixins’ in.  I, who shopped in the ‘husky’ section, looked like a  walking pleather sofa  but I saw myself as one of the cool kids – the grey sheen of the vinyl, the quiet tinkle of the zipper pulls, the myriad useless pockets.  A discussion of the sweat saturating my dingy socks, the ominous creak of distressed fabric when I sat, the rapidly peeling layer of cheap vinyl or the vapor trail of adolescent body odor would have fallen on deaf ears.  I’m not certain I ever washed them or even knew how.

  In hindsight, what saved me from permanent social damage was a rollerskating party where I fell onto those damn zippers so often the magic of coolness began to lose its luster.  Finally, in a frantic pinwheeling attempt to arrest myself before flying into the Pac Man screen, I caromed off the retaining wall and belly-flopped onto the carpet in front of the bewitching Debbie Cates, whom, up until then, I had confidently assumed was too shy to invite me to the Sadie Hawkins dance.  The resulting co-efficient of friction shredded the thin material and I slunk off to the men’s room amid snickers, clutching the remains over my dignity.  What I feel, looking back on those two months, is a nauseous ball of shame just below my heart, but that’s irrelevant (unless I wore them today) - in those heady days of zippered, jumping glory, I was there, among the gods.