Paradigm shift

My parents, Axel and I are having dinner.

"We didn't know how lucky we were in the nineties," I say. "Boybands. 'Not' used as a modifier...jean jackets with jeans."

"Jean jackets?" says Axel. "What?"

"You know. Denim jackets in a different shade from the denim trousers. It was amazing."

"Jackets made out of denim?" He is baffled and not a little suspicious. Axel is thirteen and has never seen a jean jacket in his life. He's nice about it, but it's obvious he doesn't actually believe me until I go and put on one I used to wear when I was about his age. To be fair, it looks about as unfashionable as is physically possible, right at the nadir before the trendiness cycle starts to repeat itself.

"Oh! It looks like you've...made a jacket out of trousers. Huh."

He's so cute that I have to give him a hug. "It even feels like trousers," he says. He seems quietly convinced that I have, for reasons of my own, created this prototype of a ridiculous imaginary trouser-jacket in order to mess with his mind.