Father's Pepper Pants

There's always so much emphasis put on having a normal family, perfect lifestyle and acceptable habits, that the extraordinary is greatly unappreciated. I've long since conceded that my family is both within and far outside the bounds of the apparently ordinary, and therefore I'm strangely proud of my father and his "pepper pants."

I don't know of its origin, the when, the where or even who made the pepper pants purchase. I only know that since I was a child, my father of four daughters has occasionally worn a pair of black cotton pajama pants, peppered with an assortment of... well, red peppers. It has since faded overtime as all fabrics do, or at least during the two decades that I've kept watch of its aging.

My father chooses to wear it for multiple occasions, none of which tend to really include going to bed. Normally he'll choose it for a comfortable evening with family, without further intent than to sit on the couch and enjoy a piece of milk chocolate with some red wine.

But the pants has also served other purposes. Because the pants gained some sort of rapport with my immediate family over the years, when several of us daughters reached the teenage dating years, the pepper pants took on another definition: they became a test.

"Hey Dad, bring out the pepper pants. She's bringing home a boy, Dad. You have to wear the pepper pants."

And so he did.

It was always a joke, something for us to giggle about together at the dinner table. The pants became part of some sort of devious plan to test every male soul that crossed the threshold... as if the possibility of a boy rejecting Daddy's pepper pants could lead to the end of the relationship. The current significant others have seen the pants many, many times, and thus far those relationships continue strong for now.

But still, the pants always created fun, even if the pair was only being worn for the simple pleasure of wearing pants that could never match with anything else in the world, regardless of color, or regardless of peppers.