Losing an Old Friend

I am wearing my pants at half-mast today. Though it is creating something of a stir in the office, my pants are hanging at mid-thigh for a good reason. Yesterday afternoon, one of my long time companions went to Slacks and Pants Heaven.

I wore one of my oldest pair of pants yesterday, something like Dockers in a flashy olive drab. The cuffs were quite worn and every few months I would get a pair of scissors to snip off the threads that trailed around my feet like spider webs.

The button was also missing. I kept telling myself I would sew it back on, but somehow, I never got around to it. What saved me is that I wear a belt, which mostly covered up the fact that I didn’t have a button, and that I almost always wore aloha shirts with those pants so I could keep the shirt untucked, hiding my secret button shame.

But yesterday, my pants died. I was in the restroom (I’ll spare you the specific details) and reached to pull up the zipper. I couldn’t find it. It turned out that the zipper had come away altogether. A man can live with no button OR no zipper, but not both.

Since I was on my way to a meeting, I rigged a paperclip to hold my pants together and cinched it all with a belt. I was wearing a longish aloha shirt, so that also kept me covered. Then, I gathered my materials, said a silent prayer to the Goddess of Pants, and went to my meeting.

When I got home, I changed, carefully folded my dead pants and handed them to my wife. I gave a short eulogy, reminiscing about all the good times I’d had with Old Greeny Pants (as I had nicknamed them). Then my wife crammed them into the garbage. I am not too proud to say I shed a tear or two.