Suspension

Two teenage girls complimented me on my suspenders.

One was goth'd out to the max, heavily kohled eyes, spiked collar, fingerless evening gloves, all metal and black leather. "I love your suspenders!" she shrieked. And later she called out across the lawn, "Can I have them?"

"I'm using them," I pointed out.

"Oh." Crestfallen. "Yeah."

The other was the houri of all my adolescent fantasies, a slender dark-eyed girl of indeterminate race. "Those suspenders are really cool," she said admiringly. I hope I didn't blush.

They were broad rainbow-striped suspenders, logger suspenders. I do have some cool suspenders, but these I've always thought of as a bit comical. Joke suspenders. I'll never know why they so appealed to these girls. A sixteen-year-old's sense of "cool" defies analysis. Defies my analysis, anyway.

As Sir Andrew Aguecheek might mournfully have said, "I was cool, once."