A Key to the Cool Kingdom: The Jeans That Almost Saved My Life

But there was no time to strategize. My mother was already walking toward me, carrying a stack of books against her hip with one hand and dangling her car keys with the other. A flat-out ambush was the only choice.

“Mom!” I blurted out, as she came near. She wore a removed, slightly bemused expression, as though her mind were already drifting into the story of her newest protagonist. “Mom,” I repeated, “Can I show you something? It’s important.”

“What is it?” she asked, as I grabbed her key-holding hand and dragged her toward the store window. Slowly, reverently, I extended my finger and pointed through the glass at the jeans, then turned to her with wide, beseeching eyes.

“Mom,” I said, with grave urgency, “I need those.”

She chuckled, not unpleasantly but dismissively.

“What? Those dungarees?” she said. “You don’t ‘need’ those. You have plenty of clothes.” She turned back toward the parking lot.

“Mom, please,” I begged. I sounded panicky. Without the jeans, I was doomed to loserdom forever; I might as well die. “Please. Can we just go in and look at them?”

The desperation in my voice made her tilt her head at me, quizzically.

“Sarah,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “What’s this about?”

It was a question I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know, in truth, why I believed my social standing, my identity, my very destiny hung on the purchase of the jeans in the window. I really had no idea why the new school clothes Mom had ordered me from the J.C. Penney catalog—matching blouse-and-slacks outfits that, on the glossy pages, had seemed as safe and innocuous as my school uniform—were so terribly wrong. And even if I had understood these things, I knew I wouldn’t be able to explain them to my mother. She, after all, had grown up wearing a uniform, too. She didn’t know how to dress me any better than I did.

So I simply looked at her, wordlessly, and when I took her by the hand again and pulled her toward the door of the shop, she let me.

Inside, there was a brief scuffle over the price tag—whatever the jeans cost, it was more than she’d imagined spending on the fashion whims of a 13-year-old. But luckily, a smiling, bossy saleswoman swooped in and hurried me toward a dressing room before my mother could protest.

And when I emerged from behind the curtain, there was really no way she could say no. My denim-clad reflection flashed in the three-way mirror as I spun around and around for my mother, my face nearly split in two by an enormous smile. When I tottered to a stop, I saw her smiling, too, and a bubble of gratefulness rose and nearly burst inside me.

On the way home, I hugged the shopping bag to my chest and hummed happily along with the radio.