The terribly important stoy of... Why I wore track pants until I was 13

Well, none of you voted, and I heard you loud and clear. Track pants wins hands down -- why? Because I'm not yet ready to reveal my unnatural love of Oprah, that's why, and since I am the author of this exercise in self-importance I call a blog, I have decided to carry the secret of my Oprah-love to the grave.

Fair warning: what you're about to read is a tragic tale that is absolutely, positively and at least a little bit true. Keep in mind that I've turned out awesome, so don't cry for me, bloggers (although if you don't at least get choked up...you're heartless and probably kill puppies). And now...

Picture it.

An overweight seventh grader with rosey cheeks and a strong optometrical prescription sits alone at school doodling suns with smiles in his dollar-store notebook and humming "Make your own kind of Music" by the great Mama Cass quietly to himself. He is a kind boy -- unassuming -- with a winning smile and a fantastic underhand volleyball serve, and yet, somehow, he is not the image of elementary school popularity. He is quiet, he is awkward, and everyday he wears a different matching top and bottom track suit (those are sweats for you Americans, and not in an Ashton Kutcher "Dude, where's my Car?" kind of way, but in an elastic-waist-and-ankle-with-some-neon-design-emblazoned-on-the-top kind of way). This wouldn't, of course, be a big deal at one time -- every kid in his class had once worn a track suit to school, after all -- the problem was that most kids had stopped wearing this attire when they were 9, and Brett, our overweight hero, was pushing 13.

The kids at school had not let Brett's clothes go unnoticed; in fact, they took every opportunity to tease him. They even went so far as to declare "Trackpants Thursday" -- the day that all the cool boys wore track pants as a sort of tease-the-nerd prepubescent insult orgy -- a weekly reminder that no one liked him and he was different. Brett pretended not to understand their teasing; to assume that they all wore track pants that day for the same reasons he did -- comfort and a sheer inability to conquer buttons -- but secretly, he understood their jabs, and cried in his bed at night under his Ultimate Warrior bedspread wearing his zip-up one-sy, wondering why.

'Why must they tease me so," he thought, 'Why can't they just accept that I love the feel of compressed cotton and elastic ankles. Is that so wrong? Is that so...different?'

Then one night he had a dream. He was in K-Mart, his favorite store, surrounded by racks and racks of the highest quality track suits money could buy. Excitedly, he grabbed one of the suits and tried it on. He felt the warmth of the cotton on his skin and sighed...'this is luxury,' he thought. Suddenly and rather unexpectedly, he felt hot and realized he was in the most searing pain. He looked down at his clothes, horrified, to see the elastic bands squeezing so tightly around his waist and ankles that he was turning purple. "Get it off," he yelled desperately, but to no avail; he was alone. He struggled with the suit, blood starting to trickle out over the viscious grip of the elastic. "No," he screamed, "Someone help me!" He tore at the suit with all his strength, wrestling violently with the mesh of devilish cotton, but the suit would not let go. "I don't want to wear track suits anymore," he cried, " I DON'T WANT TO DIE!" He felt the elastic squeeze tightly, crushing his insides with one lurching tug, and then --

-- He awoke alone. His zip-up one-sy was drenched in sweat or pee, he couldn't tell. Frantically, he turned on the lamp beside his bed. The cold, cheap walls of K-Mart had faded, and he was back in his room. He erupted from his bed and flung open the closet door revealing several neatly organized shelves full of folded track suits. Terror filled him, and he began to scream.

A few rooms away, Brett's mother startled awake, a piercing sound coming from her son's room. She jumped from her bed, threw on her robe and bolted down the hall. She burst into Brett's room and gasped. She was not prepared for what she saw. Her son lay on the floor surrounded by torn bits of bloody cotton, muttering something quietly to himself. He had a crazed look on his face, and fear gripped her as she realized what he had done. All the track suits were out of the closest and had been ripped, by hand she realized, into a million pieces covering the room. Her heart raced, and terror-stricken, she heard the words her son was muttering over and over again: kill the track suits. She fell to her knees and screamed, terrified, into the night.

The next day, Brett wore his first pair of jeans, and for the rest of his life since that night, has been utterly petrified of anything with elastic ankles.

And that, dear bloggers, is the terribly important story of why I wore track pants until I was 13.