My Pants Were Made in Cambodia
I was
taking a shit the other day (at the time that the title for this piece was
dreamed up: yes, the titles were conceived far in advance and with no regard to
what the accompanying text would be about) and I noticed that my pants were
made in Cambodia . There it was, printed on the tag. Oh, by the way, that tag on mattresses that
says, “Do not remove:” they always made jokes about that, ever since I was a
little kid, but even as a little kid I knew that the jokes were bogus,
predicated on bullshit, because the tags’ message in full was “not to be
removed except by the consumer” (my
italics). Why were adults so stupid, I
wondered.
Anyway, I
always removed the tags on mattresses, because I felt empowered to do so. As the child of the purchaser, I was, by
extension, a consumer. I had the right
to rip the tag off. Plus, if the tag
wasn’t meant to be removed, then why was it perforated? Tell me that, Johnny Carson, man dead from
emphysema and alcoholism.
I still
remove the tags from the backs of shirts.
I’ve never been able to stand that tag scratching my neck. Before I developed the PATIENCE for which I
am so rightly celebrated I used to rip the tags out, making a hole in the
collar. Now, since I’m a grown-up and in
my household we have scissors you’re actually allowed to use, I cut them out,
neatly. When I was living with my
parents we had one lousy pair of scissors in the house. If I used them for some crafts project my
mother would scream, “You used those scissors to cut paper?! Don’t you know that will dull the blades?”
.
