The strongest memories that I have about the clothes I wore as a boy was the short pants I wore. I didn't give much thought to my clothes when I lived in Washington. Lots of other boys I knew also wore short pants. This changed fast when my dad took us to Colorado. I found that lots of American boys didn't think much of short pants--and more precisely those of us who wore them.

I soon learned to my embarassment that our new home, Boulder, Colorado was not a place in 1960 where you could wear short pants to school and not expect to provoke a reaction. My parents hoped to get me into the University School (where students in the college of education did their practice teaching under seasoned veterans), but it was full and we would have to wait for a vacancy. In the meantime, I was packed off to the local public school down the block to begin 2nd grade.

Well, when I showed up in my shortpants suit, a minor riot ensued. Boys in Boulder wore jeans and T-shirts (in the summer) or flannel shirts (in the winter) to school. The class bullies called me every kind of name imaginable. Many of the comments, as kids, are wont to do were plays on my name. Other kids devised whatever elaborate methods of torment they could conceive of.

Some of the nicer kids took pity on me and told me I really had to stop wearing those strange clothes and get some jeans. I had never thought of myself as being strange in any way and had never given my clothes a second thought. But I suppose I have a stubborn streak and my reaction to being the center of attention was not to beg my parents for jeans and T-shirts, but to dig in my heels and use my fists as best I could.

Figure 1.--Fashion magazines during the 1960s often showed boys in short pants. These boys are pictured in an article about back to school clothes. Most American boys, especially in public school, wore long pants to school.

I didn't say anything at home about what was going on at school; I continued to trudge off to class every morning in shorts. I gather that my parents found out I had become the object of persecution when they drove by the schoolyard during recess and saw me getting beat up. I don't believe, bless their souls, they put two and two together vis-a-vis my clothes (by that point, even if they had stuck me into jeans, I don't think it would have helped much.

Thanks to Sheridan, I was so far ahead of other kids in my class the school tried putting me into third grade where I endured a new group of tormentors; my "smart-aleck" classroom image had become as big a problem as short pants), but my father went to the university administration and threatened to quit if they didn't get me into the University School.

When the next spring I objected to going back into shorts by saying that none of the other boys were wearing shorts, I seem to remember being told something along the lines of "why do you care what other boys wear? You don't want just to be a follower, do you?" This was a common response to any kind of objection to parental orders along the lines of "others" were or weren't doing/wearing/saying something. I seem also to recall "when you're old enough to buy your own clothes, you can decide what you'll wear."

The University School was no Sheridan, but it was a hell of a lot better than the public school. Most of the other kids had fathers who were either on the faculty or in something like medicine. By this time, late November, shortpants were no longer an issue. Laramie gets bitterly cold in the winter; not even the most die-hard partisan of short pants would wear or put his son into them after early November. My mother drew the line at jeans; I could wear long cords, but jeans were out. I still stood out a bit; most of the other boys wore jeans, but it wasn't anything like the lone boy in a shortpants suit.

But with the return of warm weather (not until May in Boulder) the pressure at home to go back into shorts started up. The previous fall, I hadn't even mentioned being an object of torment, but I really fought having to go back into shorts. I lost the battle. I didn't have to wear a tie or anything, but I did have to don a pair of very short, very cute striped green shorts. I still remember with total clarity the sense of being on display, the mixture of acute embarrassment mixed with a bit of pride as I approached the school. By that point, of course, I wasn't a new kid any more; I may not have been the class jock, but I wasn't shunned and tormented either--I had friends and was accepted. I worried principally about the reaction of my friends. I got a few wisecracks, but no serious teasing--much to my relief. And my teacher said "don't you look nice and cool".

That set the pattern. There were to be no more prissy little Eton suits (as I had come to think of them), but I would wear shorts the last few weeks of the term and straight through the summer (including summer school.

I remeber that first spring of 1961 in Boulder. I had gotten used to the long pants I wore during the winter and enjoyed being able to dress like the other boys. After mom had called me up for breakfast, she announced,
Mother: It's a nice, warm day today. I've got a new pair of shorts I've put out for your to wear to school today.
Me: (A little suprised and still half a sleep.) What?? I ... I don't want to wear these.
Mother: And why not? You'll be nice and cool and comfortable.
Me: But mom, short pants are for little boys. Nobody else has to wear them.
Mother: Don't be silly Bruce. Why do you care what other people do? Are you just a follower?
Me: I'm not going to wear those shorts.
Mother: You'll wear just what I tell you to. Now go back upstairs and get dressed. Put on your new short pants.
Me: I storm off but put them on.)

I remember getting pressure the summer of 1962 when I was 9 going on 10 from other kids in a little group to put on long pants for the presentation we were to make. No way; I don't think I even bothered suggesting it at home; by that point, I really enjoyed wearing shorts and disliked the feeling of putting on long pants in the fall.)

I was the only boy who wore shorts to school; only one other boy of my acquaintance wore them at all--he would only wear them in the summer, although I do remember him showing up to a mid-summer birthday party in a dressy shirt and pressed navy blue shorts. The shorts I wore to school tended to be a little longer than those for playwear--they usually stopped a couple of inches above the knees.

My play shorts were very short; they were called boxer shorts, I assume because they were like the trunks boxers wore. [HBC note: Close the actual term refers to the elasticized waistline on boxers' trunks.] I remember being told by a construction worker once that I shouldn't go around with my legs showing like that--I recall being astonished to hear that kind of comment from an adult; I was inured to it from kids; my friends had in any case long since stopped commenting on the fact that from mid-May to mid-September, I was always in shorts. Knee socks, however, disappeared from my wardrobe, since I no longer wore shorts in the winter.

We left Boulder late in the summer of 1963. My father accepted a Visiting Professorship at the University of Hawaii. For further details on my travails click HERE.

Note: a friend of mine told me of a similar experience when he returned to Montana after attending the German school in Sofia, where he and every other boy wore short pants year round. When he showed up to enroll in--I think, third grade--he was the subject of the same kind of torment and ridicule as I was, because of his shortpants suit. Given my friend's age, this would have been in the early 1940s, suggesting the shortpants suit never really took root in the American West.

Author: Bruce McPherson

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