I’ll be putting on my September pants again. I’m going out shortly.

It’s an odd term, I guess, and not entirely accurate. I mean, my September pants are a whole lot like my August pants … and my May, June, and July pants. They’re possibly even the same pair of pants.

It’ll be different come October, though.

OK, I’ll go ahead and tell you. I call them my September pants (or June or July pants) because of how long I wear them. When the weather is warm, I don’t often wear pants. That’s fun to say, but it’s nothing scandalous. I just prefer to wear shorts while I’m at home or running errands. When I go to meetings or events, though, I feel obligated to put on pants. Because I wear the pants for only a couple of hours, I’ll hang them up and change back into shorts when I get home. They’re not dirty—and any creases smooth out on the hanger— so I’ll wear the same pair of pants the next time I go to a meeting. I can usually go a whole month with the same pair of pants. This month, they’re my September pants.

Like most people who abandoned the office during COVID and started working at home, I have a dual wardrobe for my nine-to-five. I always wear a collared shirt. (I mean, it’s usually a fishing shirt, so it’s definitely not dressy, but it’s always collared.) This way, when I have a meeting via Zoom, I look somewhat professional. From the waist down, though, I’m super casual in my shorts. You’ve seen maybe a million memes depicting this once-comical notion, but for me, it’s no joke. I’m going to wear shorts every day of the week.

The shorts/pants question is kind of a throwback to centuries past, when shorts were worn only by males of a certain age. After a boy reached puberty, he would set his shorts aside and don pants—and there was no going back. Maybe that’s why we still admonish people to “put on your big-boy pants” when it’s time to deal with a situation in a grown-up way.

I don’t think I have Peter Pan Syndrome, and I sure don’t mean to shirk adult responsibilities. I just really like wearing shorts when it’s warm outside. They’re cooler and less constricting. I realize I’m lucky to have that type of freedom in my work situation, and by golly, I’m taking advantage of it.

Summer’s over today, though. And while warm days will continue long into October, they’ll become less regular … and then vanish altogether. Autumn breezes turn into winter winds, thermometers peak at lower and lower points, and shorts become impractical.

It’s not that big of a deal to wear pants, of course, yet I’ll miss my shorts and the summer-break feeling they inspire. Once the warmth is gone, I’ll pull on my big-boy pants—some of them lined with fleece. But hey, spring is always around the corner. And as the days heat up, I’ll be back in shorts. I’ll return to wearing long pants only as many hours as needed, and then they’ll go back on the hanger. Before you know it, I’ll be talking about my April pants.