He Wears a Size 36

One of our guys is a little short on clothing. He only has a few pairs of jeans and they each fall off of him, even when he wears a belt. We aren't sure if maybe he doesn't get the concept of the belt's purpose or what, but we are often reminding him to tighten up the belt and pull up the pants. At least once a day, we can expect to get an unintentional "full moon" from him.

So a couple of weeks ago, I decided to take him shopping for new jeans. Not being real sure how he would feel about trying things on or how cooperative he would be, I decided to take him to the local Goodwill store (we have a really good one) so that he could pick out some things and not spend a lot of money in case he decided never to wear them.

When we arrived in the "men's department" he said, "I need a size 36 because that's what these are, so that's what size I wear." I talked to him about the fact that his size 36 jeans fall down a lot and he may want to consider a 34. He just looked at me and said, "But I don't wear a 34, these are a 36. I guess that means I wear a 36." So I handed him a few pairs of jeans that were 36s and slid a 34 in and told him to go try them on.

Standing outside the dressing room, I hear him talking to himself about the fact that he wears a size 36 and not a 34 and he sees that one of the pair of jeans says 34 on it and he isn't going to try that on because he doesn't wear a 34. (I see a few people snickering about his soliloquy but I am not embarrassed at all because I am just thankful that he isn't yelling about needing a bucket to pee in - different guy by the way.)

Anyway, I let him go ahead and buy three pairs of jeans and five more shirts. He mentions on the way home that he'll need to add a laundry day to his schedule now that he has more clothes. I try my best to explain that just because he has more laundry doesn't mean he'll need to do laundry more often because he'll still be wearing the same amount of clothes that he is now, but that completely fell on deaf ears and now he just does laundry an extra day even though I'm not sure what he's washing because he certainly isn't changing clothes more often, but anyway.

So this was a couple weeks ago, and I mentioned this week that I haven't seen him wearing two of the new shirts he bought. He explained that he needed to go shopping for two more pairs of jeans before he could wear the shirts, because we didn't get a matching number of shirts and pants the last time we went and he can't wear the new shirts until he had jeans for them to "go with." I, again, tried to explain that he could mix and match and didn't need to have the exact number of jeans as shirts, and again, that fell on deaf ears.

So I guess we'll go shopping for two more pairs of jeans. And even though the 34 fits, the 36 is what he wears. I would be tempted to buy him a new belt too, but I worry we would need to have one for every day of the week.