Dad's Spirits Soar at Sight of Anti-Sagging Pants Sign

If you’re like most people, then you share my sentiment that it’s a pretty good idea, at least in public, to wear pants around your waist, not around your thighs.

So imagine my delight last week upon entering Enchanted Castle, the family entertainment center at 1103 S. Main St. in Lombard where my family was celebrating our children’s 11th birthday. There, prominently displayed by the main entrance, was a sign that would have seemed needlessly off-the-wall not many years ago:

“Sagging pants not allowed on these premises,” it declares. “Please pull your pants up to your waist before entering.”

The words are underscored by a graphic depicting sagging (or “saggy”) pants, with the universal “don’t do this” slash through it. One may conclude the illustration was included just in case those desperately lost souls for whom the directive was created had trouble making heads or tails of its meaning.

The encounter with the Only-in-the-21st-Century sign, in addition to warming my traditional pants-wearing heart, spurs on an array of questions, but we will limit our musings to these three:

*How thoroughly ecstatic do you suppose the graphic artist must have been to have gotten this assignment?

*How serious was the sagging-pants problem at Enchanted Castle for management to have taken the step of contracting for the sign?

*What will be the next generation’s signature Mind-Numbingly Ridiculous Fashion Statement--you know, the fad that prompts even this generation’s saggy-pants devotees to shake their head and pine for the good ol’ days of half-decent taste?