Like most kids, I hated trips to the clothing store. Two hours deprived of whiffle ball, clubhouses, and Rock’em Sock’em Robots (the blue guy had a glass jaw, one jab and his melon popped up) was bad enough, but the commandeered time instead spent stuffing myself into ridiculous wool “slacks,” striped pullovers seemingly designed to emphasize boy boobs, and shiny black shoes you would nowadays reserve for funerals, rose to the level of tragedy. The worst part, though, was when the sales clerk, his yellow tape-measure having completed its merciless work, would clear his throat, cast his gaze regretfully downward, and solemnly intone those dreaded words-the ones that usually moistened my nine-year-old eyes: “I think he’ll need a husky.”
And the dude was not talking about an Alaskan sled dog. Nope, in this context “husky” referred to a blunt, sadistically descriptive size designation applied to adult-styled kid’s clothes that fit my freakishly fat (pc terms like “thick” were a full 50 years from inception) 140 lbs. Sort of. While the expandable waist well conformed to my Frito inspired belly, the legs, lifted straight from a 1940’s gangster movie-they would not have been out of place on an occupant bellowing “You’ll never take me alive coppers!”-billowed around in a decidedly non-60’s manner.
