Throwing fit over clothes that don’t

The post-Christmas shopping season is upon us, and that means sales, mayhem, savings and more mayhem. I’d love to rejuvenate my wardrobe and go on a spending spree, buying clothes marked down 60 percent, but I can’t because I suffer from a lifelong curse — I’m afraid of fitting rooms. I’d rather go to the dentist and have my molars drilled.

Since I won’t try on clothes, my record is pretty near perfect. Nothing fits. I blame the clothing industry for this predicament for reasons I’ll explain.

Here’s my routine: I take a pair of pants off the rack, I check to see if they’re allegedly my size, I buy them but when I get home, they’re either too tight or too long, which leaves me no alternative except to keep them hanging in the back of my closet for a decade ... or until the end of the year when I gather together clothes I’ve never worn because they don’t fit and drop them off at Goodwill. Over the years, I probably got more tax breaks from clothes donations than from my four dependents.

You’re probably wondering why I don’t simply return them and get the right size. Well, I also have an aversion to the customer service department. I’d rather talk to an IRS auditor.

This points to a fundamental flaw in the clothing industry that only legislation can solve. Now that Build Back Better has been shelved, I urge our congresspersons to hammer out a compromise bill that requires manufacturers to size clothes in odd numbers instead of even numbers and to ban XL, XXL, XXXL 4XL and 5XL. What the heck do all those XLs mean anyway?

Sad to say, most Americans wear clothes that look like they came from “Les Miserables.” You’ll never see such ill-fitting garments in a fashionable city such as Milan because it’s against the law.

Since childhood, I’ve been cursed because my waist size is always an odd number like 33, 35 and 37. I seem to skip the even-numbered measurements, but all you can find on the rack are 34, 36 and 38. My pants length is odd too. I can find 30 and 32 but no 31. Being an allaround odd guy, this causes problems that often require the expertise of a costly Italian tailor.

My pants are either too tight or too loose. I realize that having your pants falling off your butt is the American way, and I propose legislation to solve that too. Manufacturers should be required to provide elastic waist bands under penalty of law.

When I went to buy a pair of jeans recently, things got very complicated. I quickly learned there are more types of jeans than supplemental health care plans for retirees. They have jeans that sit below the waist, jeans that fall at the navel, and jeans that hover around the hips. I couldn’t find anything above the belly button, which is my preferred placement but entirely unfashionable. Then, there’s slim fit, regular fit, relaxed fit and Bozo the Clown baggy fit.

After 20 minutes of rummaging through different types of jeans, I found what I thought I needed. “Regular fit, straight leg with regular in the seat and thigh and sits at waist.” You need a degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology to make sense of that mumbo-jumbo.

I didn’t calculate whether they were pre-shrunk or unshrunk into the equation, so they seemed to fit well, at least until they came out of the washing machine. The truth is I have only one pair of jeans that fits. The others are either too tight or too long ... and headed for Goodwill even though I’ve never worn them.

I also had a problem when I went shopping for a pair of slippers and discovered they ranged in size from medium, which was 9 to 10, to large, which was 11 to 12. I take a 10, but medium was too small and large was too large. Foolishly, I bought the tight pair. Don’t believe what they say. Slippers don’t stretch. Ever.

Here’s a shopping tip for all you guys — and the wives or girlfriends who select their clothes: Buy clothes marked “stretch” or “flex.” It doesn’t matter if they’re shirts, pants, socks, underwear or long johns. Stretching and flexing are the key to comfort. Trust me.