Threadbare

The denim my jeans were made from had always frayed before giving up and disappearing into the wind. Or maybe the tiny threads got washed out with the dirt and grime and whatever else is clinging to them when they go into the washer. I thought maybe it would take longer for the holes to appear if the jeans I wore came to me new. “New” as in never been worn by another human being. Not “new” as in new to me. All of our clothes came to us “new” as in the second meaning. I guess clothes were expensive to buy “new” like the first meaning I mentioned. I didn’t really know what expensive meant. I’d had no experience with expensive things. Most of the things I had worn were given to my family or myself directly by someone who had no use for them any longer. We were grateful for the generosity and made good use out of what we could.

It’s a good thing that none of my favorite things are expensive. In fact, my most favorite things do not cost me any amount of money. Foreign languages for example. They aren’t expensive, thanks to the library they are free. Great big, fat summer raindrops. Free. The smell of fresh cut hay. Free, for me anyway. The sound of my little sisters giggling or even laughing hysterically, either way, one of my favorite things and also...absolutely free. The way a kitty purrs or a dog wags its tail, both among my favorite things and both free.

Since my world is so full of things that make me happy without costing a penny, I am pleased to say that I didn’t lose much sleep over the kind of “new” all my clothes were. Yes, it can be embarrassing when one of the kids at school took notice of my wardrobe. If the kid also happened to be a bully it would be worse than embarrassing. I think that people who have expensive things have them just so they can point out to those who don’t have them that they don’t have them. What a strange thing for people to do. Spend a whole bunch of money just so they can make sure people know that they have extra money. I wonder if those people know that there are people living right here in our town that don’t always get dinner because they don’t have enough money. Now that, I did lose sleep over. Sometimes being hungry can keep you up at night.

Sometimes what keeps you up at night is the secrets you keep. The ones you keep stashed away in a place where nobody will find it. Tucked behind the toilet tank, or in a flower pot somewhere. The last bag of halloween candy bars, or your favorite ball glove that you want to be sure none of the others finds first during gym class. Maybe people with extra money keep money like secrets stuck in places. The only safe time to take the secrets out of hiding is in the dark in the middle of the night while everyone else is sleeping.

We cut our own firewood (natural gas, propane and electricity to heat the home place was too expensive) so we had a wood stacking room in the basement right next to the room with a wood burning furnace. The wall between those two concrete block rooms was missing one block somewhere in the middle, but all the way at the top of the wall. That’s where I kept my secret. If anybody got suspicious about what I was doing I would just tell them I was stacking more firewood or stoking the furnace. It was a little black notebook just small enough that it would fit in my back pocket along with a pencil. I had to hide it or the others would take it and read it. They would read it outloud no matter who was standing there or how “secret” the secrets were. I don’t know if you know this, but kids can be mean people. I recommend staying away from kids as much as possible because they are aggressively unpredictable.

Like the incident that occurred when one of the others found my first little notebook. Honestly it was more of a note”pad” than a note”book.” After quite a ruckus the first note”pad” ended up in the toilet. I was embarrassed for months afterwards. I had written a story in it about the girl I was going to marry one day. I had given her the name of the prettiest girl in my class. I made up characters for the story including her family and her pets. I had written about her grades. I had written about the expensive telescope she received for her birthday, about our first dance, and the first time we held hands. All kinds of little details were in there. I had even written that her family had given us $20,000 as a gift at our wedding!! That’s what actually started the ruckus. One of the others laughed and shoved me when the part about the wedding gift was read. It was read louder than any gospel ever been read by any preacher in any church. The shove and the laugh came at the same speed as the declaration to the world that I “...won’t never even see $20,000 EVER!!! What kind of girl’s EVER gonna marry a loser that’s always wearing those rags anyway?!?!”

There was nothing I could do to prevent the ruckus that followed. There was a lot of running and chasing and throwing the note”pad” back and forth just out of my reach until finally it was dropped in range and I recovered it. I did the only thing that I could think to do with something so embarrassing as the writing on those pages. I ran to the bathroom and threw it in the toilet so nobody would ever read it again.

The “new” black one was my favorite little notebook. The cover was leather all the way around, and it had a ribbon in it on the binding just like that book that has the gospel in it, and we all know how fancy that book is. I liked the new book so much that I didn’t forget to put it back one single time after writing in it. I don’t know what ever happened to that little black note”book.” However, I did end up marrying the girl from my first note”pad.” She matches the description I had written of my future wife perfectly as I recall. For a gift on the day we got married, her parents gave us……….