When you first visit your city of choice in Europe you are struck by the ridiculousness of the jeans. Why would anyone have 20 zippers on their jeans, or a pocket sewn at the knee? In Paris you see the jeans of the world walking around unashamed. But after a couple of weeks there is a strange shift in thinking. “Man, look at all the zippers on those jeans…I wonder if I can find a pair with even more pockets. Suddenly having “Porn Star” in shiny studs embroidered across your ass seems like a statement that you’d like to make. I know- I’m there- I feel your pain. It isn’t common sense that has kept me from buying jeans in Paris but a simple lack of funds. I also try to picture myself getting picked up by family or friends at the airport after our Paris trip is complete. Hopefully the following memory will ensure that sanity prevails.

Remember the first time you visited the Caribbean? The surf, the sand, the exotic locals- Bob Marley was playing out of every club- the smell of marijuana was everywhere. Remember how you kept seeing all those black people with their hair in cornrows. The sweat glistening off their toned bodies and you said to yourself. “I’m gonna get me some cornrows- Sharisa whatchyu tink about dat!” And you actually went through with it because Sharisa is even a bigger idiot than you and she didn’t talk you out of it. Remember how you looked at yourself in the mirror and you saw how it really looked but as you walked the streets of Montego Bay you honestly thought of yourself as ebony skinned beauty with a muscular, toned body and a slight sheen of sweat and exotic oils when, in fact, you are a chunky, pasty-skinned white girl whose muscles have atrophied and the only shine coming off you is from the Big Gulp Slurpee you spilled on yourself while you did a marathon viewing of “Saved by The Bell” 2 days ago?

It wasn’t until you landed back in the United States and walked through the airport concourse that you saw the other white girls with cornrows and sun burnt scalps. You could faintly hear the suppressed laughter of those around you as they passed. You and the other white girls looked to the ground as you walked, the smiles slowly fading, the coconut pirate-head grasped in your sweaty little hands, the fake green parrot peeking it’s head out of your duty free bag. It was then you realized that cornrows might not have been such a great idea- and then you began to wonder what happened to Sharisa and that maybe you should have rousted her after she passed-out on the beach in low-tide.

...and that, my friends, is why I wont buy jeans in Paris and why Sharisa’s mom wont talk to me anymore.