The Penis Chronicles presents “Parental Classification”

Is there a point in one’s parenting career where you become easily identified as a parent? What is it that establishes that identification? Age? Clothing? A way of addressing those who we could be a parent too? A face dripping with exhaustion? What is it?

It seems that at some point I left the “YOU’RE a mom?!” category and moved into the “you are a mom” classification. Here is the story, or at least the point in the story where I was brought up to speed on the division.

I enter the store that I love to buy my jeans at. I have a few minutes free of mother duties; to be clear, the children are not with me. The young man working in the store, in his early 20’s if that, smiles and asks if he can help me with something. I explain that I usually wear a particular brand of their jeans and that I know that they don’t carry them in the store anymore. I ask if there is something similar. “I’ll show you The Mom Jeans,” he says.

Naturally, I pause and look around. Mom jeans? Is he talking to me? A lightbulb flashes in my head: ding, ding, ding. Congratulations, you have reached the mom mile stone. Something about you, something you may or may not sense yourself screams MOM. I firm my spine (sigh inwardly) and follow the young man to the “mom jeans.”

Yes, I bought them: relaxed fit, ripped, button fly, and they can be worn with a fold at the bottom giving them a Capri feel or with no fold covering the ankle. They are my “mom jeans.” I wear them proudly and I love them.

By Shari Marshall – 2019