I Hate Cheap Knee Highs

I wear pants to work, usually. Therefore, I don't bother with pantyhose much, but rather knee highs. I find it handy to slip them on and achieve the polished look a pair of pantyhose offers, without the struggle of pulling those sausage casings clear up to my waste.

Many months ago, in a fit of thrift, I picked up a bundle of cheap, black knee highs, thinking, "Hey, they'll all match! I won't have to sort them and I'll always be able to find a matching pair when I get ready in the dark!" This little bundle of nylon wonder seemed to cure all my early-morning woes. I hate not being able to find socks or knee highs on dark winter mornings.

However, I would live to regret that purchase. When I pull them on in the morning, their threads catch on my fingerprints and snag. They don't snag enough to run, so I don't feel as though I could pitch them. As I write, my current pair of cheap knee highs have slid down my shins and are circling my ankles like filmy, black wraiths. When they are behaving themselves and staying put, they pinch the flesh just below my knee, all the way around. But while they are pinching, I can also sense them giving in to gravity; I know they will soon be back at my ankles. This activity causes me to spend the day in a mild but constant state of irritation; I'm either stopping what I'm doing to pull them up or dreading their descent.

Perhaps, when I get the time and the money, I will devote a day to shopping with a friend, spending hour after luxuriant hour finding the right knee highs. I will then invest a good deal of money in them. I will protect those knee highs. I will wash them separately. I will sort them and pair them and lay them next to each other in a sacheted drawer. Then, when the cold dark mornings smack me in the face, I will have the pleasant foreknowledge of matched, lovely knee highs in my future and a little less irritation in my day.