Dress pants and khakis are way more comfortable to me than jeans

When I began my career, I worked at a newspaper. My summer office attire was a t-shirt and shorts. If I was feeling fancy, it was a pair of jeans and a polo.

When I transitioned to the 9-to-5 world in the mid-90s, the bar was raised to wearing a dress shirt and tie most days. For my first PR job at the Cleveland Clinic, it was a full suit every day, apparently on the off chance that as a hospital spokesperson, I might unexpectedly be asked to go on camera if a TV crew showed up and wanted a statement (which never actually happened).

Nowadays I have a formula when it comes to dressing for work: If the weather is warm, you will see me in a button-down shirt and a pair of solid-color pants (either dress pants or Dockers). If it is chilly, I wear the same thing with a sweater over top of the shirt.

I rarely stray from this approach. As a 53-year-old suburban dweller, I feel it is my right to dress in a boring, formulaic manner.

Here's what I don't get: Why do office workers treat "jeans days" as some sort of bonus? Over the years at the various organizations where I've worked, there has always been a desire for Friday jeans days. Or in the case of certain office competitions, one of the prizes has often been a jeans day.

I do not understand this. Maybe I'm buying the wrong jeans, but to me, jeans are not the ultimate in comfortwear. I would much rather wear my looser-fitting dress pants or those good old, dad-approved Dockers. They just feel better, especially when I'm wearing them for 9-10 hours at a stretch.

Office dress codes have evolved to the point that – at my place of employment, anyway – you can wear jeans just about every day of the week if you want. And I have done that before, but it only served as a reminder that jeans are not the sartorial delight they're cracked up to be.

Of course, your perspective on this may vary greatly. I'm someone who honestly never minded wearing a suit and tie every day (it greatly simplified the process of picking out clothes in the morning, I'll tell you that). So maybe my definition of "comfortable" clothing doesn't necessarily match that of the rest of the world.

There's also this: I'm a man. Maybe women value jeans more highly than the office-approved alternatives they're given.

Jeans were originally developed in the 19th century for mineworkers, weren't they? I'll you what, then...the next time the Materion Corporation asks me to descend 300 feet underground to search for gold, I'll throw on a pair of Levis.

In the meantime, my closet full of patterned button-downs and black, blue, gray and brown pants serves me just fine, thank you very much.

Five dad wardrobe tips I live by

This works. Apparently.

 

(1) Socks with sandals = no, but socks with slides = yes
No socks with sandals is an eternal rule, but you can apparently wear socks with those athletic sandals they call slides. I have a pair from Adidas that I mostly wear when I'm taking out the trash or going to get the mail or something. I've learned from my kids, particularly when they're participating in sports, that you can get away with socks and slides, so I do it regularly.

(2) Cargo shorts are always a 'no,' though I still dispute this
I no longer own any cargo shorts because I'm afraid one of my kids (potentially the oldest one, but we're not naming names) will kill me if I wear a pair. The non-athletic shorts I own are all now pretty much just a series of simple, two-pocket, non-cargo khaki jobs. I happen to like cargo shorts, but I avoid them in order to keep peace within the family.

(3) Denim will never go out of style
I will likely be wearing jeans the day I die. Just good old, straight-ahead, blue Levis. These will always be in my closet.

(4) Mid-calf white socks? Sure!
Not with shorts or anything, but as long as I'm alive, the long white sock industry will stay afloat.

(5) Buy a winter coat you like and wear it for at least three presidential administrations
I have a black overcoat I've worn every semi-cold day for the better part of a decade. I have it dry cleaned each year. I'm probably due for a new one, but I'm riding this one out until it's threadbare. And even then I'll probably take it on a year-long farewell tour.

Fond memories of youth sports in the 70s and 80s

The photo above is not, it should be noted, one in which I or anyone I know appears. My little league softball/baseball career had just about ended by 1983.

But the one thing I share with the young men in this picture is the experience of having played dozens (maybe hundreds) of games wearing jeans. Not baseball pants, just good old Toughskins from Sears.

And, I should add, we were brilliant.

Or at least we thought we were. I played on some pretty good teams over the years and could hit the ball a fair distance, which is a good thing considering I had such a weak arm for an outfielder.

Here's what I remember about youth sports in the late 70s and early 80s:

• We were always coached by dads, many of whom smoked during practices and games.
• We wore those jeans but did have sweet matching t-shirts and hats.
• If you weren't a good hitter, no one on the other other team had any qualms about yelling out that fact when you came to the plate ("Move in, move in! He can't hit it out of the infield!") I'm not saying this is necessarily good, but it's pretty how much how it was.
• We got ice cream after games, but only if we won.

And I remember having fun. The whole thing really was a lot of fun.

I'm not saying it's radically different now, though I don't see the kids wearing jeans while they're playing. I spent more than a decade coaching and organizing youth soccer, T-ball, and baseball leagues, and the one thing kids of the 2000s shared with us Gen Xers is that they were just out there looking for a good time.

So that was always my philosophy as a dad-coach. Yes, I was going to make you work to get better, and yes, we were going to try to win. But if you're 9 years old and you're not out there having fun, then some adult (in this case me) has failed pretty badly.

You can go on your Old Person Rants about keeping score and participation trophies and all of that, but I'm not too inclined to listen. All I know is it's possible for young athletes to improve while still enjoying themselves. And if you're not doing both, you're not going to get much from the experience.

Of course, I still say sweating your way through a doubleheader in a pair of jeans in 85-degree weather builds character, but maybe that's just me.