The Way We Were by Colin Ella - Part 32: The Long and Short of It
Back in the 1930s and 1940s it was precisely the opposite for then it was rare to see a schoolboy in long trousers although by the age of fourteen a few lads were taking to long pants. And it has to be said we were very much at home in our ‘shorties’.
Our legs enjoyed fresh air all the year round appreciating the warmth of the summer sun but not living too well with the nip of frost in winter when we often needed a rub of Vaseline to counter the chapping.
But our short pants had other advantages both for providers and wearers. They were cheaper than long pants. In those days we had to make clothes last a long time and patched pants were very much the order of the day, but at least mums had much less patching to do on shorts than would have been the case with longs.
There were no zips to worry about, buttons did the job and good braces kept us decent.
Our ‘shorties’ were very handy when playing games, and especially football, giving us freedom and freshness in our movements.
In general there were few disadvantages with our short trousers.
We sometimes got spells in our legs from classroom chairs or Sunday School pews, but worse still, they offered a fair amount of bare flesh for an irate teacher to plant a sharp slap or a painful slash of the cane. Oh dear - I perhaps shouldn’t have mentioned the cane, but in those days it was frequently employed and few parents, if any, complained about its use.
It did a good job and helped to maintain good discipline as well as being a character builder. That bare flesh was also often the target of an enemy pupil intent on giving a hard pinch or a ping with elastic, a business which often led to the teacher adding his own punishing contribution to the matter.
Over the years and as kids have had more and more of the adult atmosphere forced upon them so much has been eroded of that needful stage of innocent childhood so vital to a rounded development in early life.
And in this adult influence has come the demise of short trousers. I still find it a bit surprising to see the hordes of little lads in their many styles of long trousers and I wonder if there still are a few schools that insist on the wearing of ‘shorties’. Very unlikely I suppose and nowadays any young fellow turning up wearing short pants would soon suffer the ridicule of his peers, but maybe a bit more fresh air round those little legs would not be such a bad idea.
Next week in Part 33 - Compton versus Wurlitzer.
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Friday 18 May 2012
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