I can't get my mind around the current fashion, even among young women — although fewer than their male counterparts — who wear their pants so low that it's difficult, impossible really, to imagine what keeps them up.

I understand the need to make a statement at that age and that fashion affords the opportunity to do that. When I was their age I wore a leather jacket, garrison belt, motorcycle boots and jeans. It screamed of disrespect and revolution and drove the grownups to distraction. Still, nothing about whatever sort of fashion statement is represented by these precarious trousers makes any sense.

For example, the wearer is required to continually reach down and pull the pants up because with each step they inch lower and, unattended, will soon fall down. The young man in front of me the other day, for example, was headed for the island grocery as was I. Nearly at the door, he must have been prompted to check his pockets for money. He jabbed his right hand down into his pants pocket, bending far to starboard to reach the pocket's depths which, of course, would have been within reach had his pants been around his waist instead of his hips.

The motion caused his trousers, which had been only barely clinging to his hips but which were now unencumbered, to fall down and the only means he had of extricating himself from what would otherwise have been an embarrassing and chilly exposure, was to clutch frantically, with the hand he still had in his pocket, at what little fabric remained within reach therein and yank upward.

This caused everything in his pocket to spill out onto the floor and, even then, allowed only the right side of his pants to regain their precarious perch on his hip. When he bent down to retrieve his stuff from the floor he revealed to me and to the others lined up behind me the familiar crevasse separating one cold and bright red cheek from the other.

And when he stood up again the aforementioned perch failed and the pants began their descent once more. He was with a young woman who was attentive to his needs and held them up while he put things back in his pocket. I don't know how he'd have managed if he'd been alone.  

Phil Crossman lives on Vinalhaven