The Great Track Pant Trek of 2016

If there’s one thing my six-year-old and Missy Elliott circa 1997 have in common besides a love of hip-hop, it’s an unrelenting love of track suits.

For the past two winters, my child has worn nothing but track pants every single day. Oh, on Sundays she may wear a dress to church, but she throws on a pair of pants underneath to stay warm, because leggings are the tightest tight that ever tighted. For her Girl Scout father/daughter dance, I was prepared to bedazzle a track suit in case our two-hour stint in a Bergner’s dressing room couldn’t produce a satisfactory frock.

Part of the fixation is that she has sensory processing issues when it comes to clothes, and the other, let’s face it, is that girls’ clothes aren’t the most comfortable in the world. What woman doesn’t want to come home, shed her jeans along with her bra and throw on her husband’s company blood drive t-shirt from 2009 to eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch in her underwear?  It’s the broke mom’s equivalent of a spa day at the Four Seasons.

If I could wear yoga pants to work every day, by god I would. Sneaking extra donuts out of the breakroom would be much more satisfying if my bulging pants button didn’t rat out my crime.

The only track pants my daughter will wear are from the Danskin Now collection at Walmart. Try to get her in some Target Champion or Kmart Everlast gear, and you’ll be on the receiving end of a meltdown. So each fall, the husband and I snatch up enough Danskin to outfit a small yogi army.

Like any active first grader, my kid can be hard on her clothes. And by February, her wardrobe began falling prey to paint splatters, rips and grass stains. When I realized I was washing clothes every night to be sure she had a pair to wear the next day to school, I knew it was time to stock up.

Visting the Walmarts in Edwardsville, Collinsville and Fairview Heights, I found a bunch of track pants. In other sizes. Don’t panic, I told myself. This is why God and Al Gore invented the Internet. But they both flipped me the bird when it was discovered the Walmart website also did not carry a 6/6X.

My husband came in to ask why I was ripping up pillows and foaming at the mouth. “The Walmarts…,” I sobbed. “They’re out of track pants. And we can’t get them online.”

That’s when the horror came over his face and he collapsed like a corseted antebellum debutante in a heat wave.

“It’s ok, D,” I whispered as I patted his head.  “We’ll figure something out. But where do you get this fainting couch? And the smelling salts?”

It’s at a moment like this, when everything is stacked against you, that you call out the heavy artillery – a group of women who get an adrenaline rush from the hunt and the satisfaction of a good deal.

I hit up Facebook where I rounded up my in-laws and friends to help me find the pants needed to maintain the balance in our home. I knew it was a big ask. When you get used to Target, you just can’t resort back to Walmart with its tiny aisles, its toiletries and cleaning supplies on opposite sides of its Superstore, and its two checkers per 900 people. Hold on…my anxiety.

As ridiculous as the drama over a pair of track pants sounds to most people, knowing that every mom has been in the same boat at one time or another, whether it’s tracking down an in-demand Christmas toy or scavenging to secretly find a replacement for their kid’s stuffy they destroyed in the dryer, I hoped they would be understanding.

The reaction was something I can only describe as my own personal version of Newsies. Like Brooklyn swinging in with the other boroughs to stand with Jack Kelly against the evil Pulitzer, my newsboys were a group of women who were ready to carry the banner and seize the day.

 “I got Kirkwood!”

“Valley Park here.”

“Godfrey’s covered.”

From Chesterfield, Mo. to Effingham, Ill., my team stepped up to assist. Over the next two days, I received countless updates by text and Facebook messages alerting me to the sad fact that the racks were empty until finally, a message from my friend Lynn popped up.

“I found two pairs in Maplewood. Guarding them with my life in the checkout line.”

And then the world only got brighter. Another friend found two more. And on a visit to the Cahokia Walmart over lunch, I hit the jackpot. Four shiny new pairs of size 6. And a handful of 7’s so I could stock up for next year.

“I think you cleaned them out,” the woman behind me in line laughed.

“Yeah, it’s the only thing my daughter will wear.” “I have friends hunting all over the St. Louis area and Central Illinois for these things,” I added.

“Those are some good friends.”

And that’s when the tear ducts went all The Notebook on me. Over $5 track pants. Because some people were willing to take a few minutes out of their day to help out another mom, a little girl’s life got a little bit easier. With her mind constantly bubbling with worries and anxieties she has trouble handling, something as simple as not having to decide what to wear each morning offers some relief to her stress. She’s able to gain a sense of control a life that can seem overwhelming and get her through the day ahead.

As my friend, Lisa, eloquently said, “Sometimes it takes a village pillaging all the local Walmarts to raise a child.”

After collecting the pants from everyone, I arranged them like any good huntress after a successful expedition, sweeping my arm across them in a grand, celebratory gesture and waiting for the accolades from my daughter.

That’s when she shrugged and told me she wanted to start wearing jeans to school.