The Little White Label

Image by Drew Olanoff via Flickr

Remember when this website didn’t focus on the Life & Times of Gen X every Monday? I do.

As soon as I created this segment I knew one person who just had to make an appearance. His name is Mark Kaplowitz and he gets down with the craft over at his site called Schlabadoo. If you ever come looking for me here but I’m not around there’s a good chance I’m hanging over at his place with the latest installment. He’s got the gift of being able to make writing appear effortless. I recommend subscribing to his site. You can also find him on Twitter.

Mark and I have bonded over our fondness for those halcyon days when Choose Your Own Adventure books ruled the day and Roger Rabbit and his bride ruled the night. So let’s get to making more memories by remembering the way we were before Kurt Cobain dropped an A-bomb of grunge on our culture.  

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I knew that Z. Cavaricci’s were special pants the moment I first laid eyes on them. The wearer was a friend of mine, and the pants made him glide more than walk through the middle school cafeteria, holding a plate of fries and his head high.

The pleats were so wide I could reach out and touch them from where I sat. The legs tapered down to thick athletic socks. A constellation of belt loops rose above the waist, and front and center–running down the exterior of the fly–was the crown jewel: a little white label with “Z. Cavaricci” in vertical block lettering.

Experience told me that anyone who went to school wearing pants with a little white label running down the front of his pants would get taunted until the end of time, particularly if those pants buckled at the torso and flared out like a tarp over a family reunion. But experience was wrong. The Z. Cavaricci’s raised my friend’s standing among the other sixth graders, surpassing even the wearers of Reebok Pumps and authentic Bart Simpson t-shirts.

The allure of Z. Cavaricci’s rested, in large part, on the rumored $80 price tag. I tried to imagine what kind of store sold $80 pants. I pictured my friend being welcomed by a tuxedoed salesman who, at the snap of his fingers, would summon a footman bearing the pants on a silk pillow. “This is our latest pair, sir. Would you care for a soft drink or a box drink?”