The Slice: Think before you cut loose

I can’t claim to be an expert on this.

But someone has to speak up, in the interest of upholding Spokane’s community standards. So it might as well be me.

Here are a dozen things to keep in mind when converting a pair of blue jeans into cut-offs.

1. First make sure you really are done with the jeans as long pants.

2. Don’t cut the jeans while you are wearing them.

3. If, when wearing your makeshift denim shorts, you hear people shout “Hey, hey, open food here!” you made them too short.

4. If the simple act of you wearing your cut-offs serves to remind people that they need to schedule long-postponed medical exams, you made them too short.

5. If strangers refer to your new summertime shorts as “capri pants” or “clam diggers,” you might have made them too long.

6. If washing your cut-offs would almost certainly make them disintegrate, it might be time to consider retiring them.

7. If you are a teenage girl or young woman and some leering old letch says “Mmmm … I like you in them Daisy Dukes,” you made them too short.

8. If you are a guy and people keep calling you “Gilligan” or “Little Buddy,” you did something wrong when crafting your shorts.

9. If there are more square inches of holes in your shorts than of actual fabric, you need to start over with a different pair of jeans.

10. If you self-wedgie every three steps, there is either too much of you or not enough of your cut-offs.

11. Don’t start with a pair of jeans that you traditionally wear halfway down your backside.

12. If the sight of you in your cut-offs prompts talk about ointments, “springtime freshness” and a certain “Seinfeld” episode, go home and change.

Slice answer: “Regarding a version of ‘Isn’t that special’ or other biting condemnations,” wrote Ann Carey. “My mother, Mickey Rabel, says ‘Oh my, I’ve never seen anything like it,’ which allows those that want to, to take it as a compliment.”

Today’s Slice question: Who/what is your garden’s No. 1 enemy?