Do You Remember?

When I was a little girl, clothing wasn't as "convenient' as it is now. For instance, underpants didn't have nice elastic bands on them. There was a strip of elastic sewed into a hem around the waist and legs. Usually the underpants outwore the elastic, and eventually it would break, leaving one in the embarassing position of having ones underpants fall down around the ankles, or try to hold them up until you could find a safety pin. Sometimes the elastic would break and women would just walk out of their underpants like they had never had them on. Of course if you were smart, you wore your garter belt on the outside of your underpants, thus assuring that they would not fall any further than the top of the garter belt, which was usually located somewhere around the top of the hip bones. Anythng that had elastic waistbands was made the same way, the strip of elastic was sewn into a casing and usually wore out long before the clothing did. Then you cut a slit in the casing, fished around for the end of the elastic, tied it into a knot, and hoped for the best. Sometimes the elastic was already stretched out and had lost its "bounce", then you were stuck with underpants that you had to tie on each time you wore them. Bras weren't much better, the straps wore out much sooner that the rest of the bra and were usually repaired with a safety pin. Mothers used to tell their daughters to be sure they had on underwear without any pins in them, just in case you were run over by the street car and had to go to the hospital, how embarassing it would be for all those people to see that you had your underwear pinned together. Tsk, Tsk, Tsk. If you are waiting for a point to this entire thing, you can just keep on waiting, the only point is that your underwear is made much better these days, but I have noticed that the garments themselves stretch out and need safety pins or something to keep them from sagging in the wrong places. Men in the earlier days didn't have elastic in their underpants. They had a waistband with a button, that must have been rather uncomfortable when they gained weight, or ate a big meal, maybe the pants they unbuttoned after a big meal was their underpants, they at least had the advantage of having on trousers so their underpants couldn't be completely lost.