Overalls Beat All

Mary Jane’s Farm magazine has published a new article of mine, Bird Music, on p.26 in the August-September issue of the magazine. This issue is on newsstands now, take a look!

I can’t share that article from the current issue yet. Instead, I’ll share my last article, Overalls Beat All, that was published in the June-July issue of Mary Jane’s Farm magazine. 

Overall, it was a rough time when I broke my arm after that unplanned dismount off my horse.  It was my right arm, my dominant hand, and simple things became difficult.  Especially buttoning and zipping up my jeans.  Oddly, that season of the broken arm, when I was less active, my jeans started shrinking, becoming even harder to fasten.  Why do jeans do that to us?

Long ago when my oldest son was little, I had a pair of bib overalls.  The cool striped ones, like farmers wear.  Or railroad engineers. I even had the matching railroad-style hat, and a wooden train whistle.  One must respect the whole outfit, especially when raising boys.  I would wear those loose-fitting overalls often and I usually left one of the over-the-shoulder straps undone.  Because why buckle it when I’ll just have to undo it later when I go to the bathroom?  Bib overalls stay up fine with just one strap. 

My mom remembers visiting during that time and dressing my son, a toddler, in his own little overalls.  She started to fasten the second strap over his shoulder, when he clearly told her, with a few mispronounced words, that it wasn’t done that way.  Overalls were to be worn with only one strap.  Like mother, like son. 

Flash forward again to the time of my broken arm.  I no longer had overalls, and was wearing stretchy pants, sweatpants, and even slacks, because they were easy to pull up and fasten with one hand.  I’m really not a slacks-wearing girl these days, and the wind blows right through those lightweight pants.  I missed my jeans. I mentioned to my family how overalls would work well given my limited dressing abilities. 

My husband searched all over town for overalls in my size, long length.  He found some plain blue denim overalls, gave them to me as a birthday gift, and they actually fit!  I was happy to have them, and of course only used one shoulder strap, because that is the way we do things in this house.  Also because of laziness, and because I only had one working hand.   I wore those new overalls for a week straight.  Then my husband surprised me with another pair of overalls: purple, with vegies printed all over them!  I will be dressed in the height of style while gardening this year. 

Now that my arm is recovering, I’m back to jeans, at least some of the time.  But I’m still wearing those comfy overalls with one shoulder strap undone, sometimes on purpose and sometimes because the one side doesn’t clip very tightly anyhow.  A few times my friends have reached over to fasten the clip for me, making me laugh.  I guess they don’t recognize a fashion trendsetter when they see one. 

[Photo credit: pexels.com]