When
I went back to school for the ninth-grade the first day in school had
me at odds with my cool Payson friend. He was a cool kid who knew
about cool stuff but I was not really buying what Ihe was selling in
this situation. I had only played with him a couple of times over the
summer and he had not seemed so drastically different but that was
because I didn't know about a hot new influence in fashion and
culture. That summer a young, very young, rap duo by the name of
Kriss Kross shook up the hip-hop scene with edgy streetwise rap about
missing the bus and jumping. The way they were influencing fashion
was that they were wearing their expensive clothes three sizes too
big, backwards, and with the tags still on. Seriously. Wearing your
clothes backwards was not cool even if you had very expensive and
cool clothes you just looked like you were not quite sure how the
clothes you bought were supposed to go. My friend had a two fold plan
to blow everyone’s fashion mind on the first day of school we would
wear our clothes backwards and we would wear these peace sign
necklaces he had made for both of us. I don't know why he wanted to
dress like we were in a boy band, or going to Sadie Hawkins
together, but he was fixated on it and insisted when I got to school
that I should go to the bathroom and change all of my clothes front
to back. To my everlasting shame I did but quickly found the problems
with his plan. First, we looked like idiots. Second, my clothes were
the size that I needed them to be to wear them front-wise and they
did not have the room for a reversal which caused them to pinch and
bind at all of the joints. Third the necklace that he had constructed
for me was way too big. The necklace was made out of really heavy
chain and was about four feet in diameter so it weighed about ten
pounds. The part he was most proud of though was a peace sign that he
had made from an old coat hangers and it was about the size of a
dinner plate. On my small neck and body I looked more like the ghost
of a skinny white wannabe hip-hop Jocob Marley come back from the dead to warn kids to not
give into peer pressure. The peace sign landed about mid thigh
against my backwards pants and I looked in the mirror and realized I
looked like I had brain damage and turned all of my clothes back to
the front and took off my comically huge neck-a-chain and went out
to face my friend's disappointment. He told me to go back and get
changed around because class was about to start I told him that I
would not be wearing my clothes in a front to back manner on this day
or any and he told me, “fine be a fag, I don't care.' He asked for
his neck-a-chain back as he intended to give it to a friend who would
appreciate it. I don't know if he was cursed with dramatically
unappreciative friends or what but I never saw it worn in school or
out of school ever again. After the first day of having his
Kriss-Kross dressing fantasy dashed he forgave me and we were friends
again and that fad, which never really started died with a whimper.
