Another Incident Involving Pants

T, the man who left the variable and sometimes violent climes of Minnesota for the appallingly warm lands of Florida, called to report that his pants have revolted.

My brain rolled over.

“That’s revolted,” he quickly repeated.

Ah, well, he knows me, doesn’t he, knew that my mind was spinning with ways in which to agree with him that his wardrobe could be considered revolting.

We are, after all, talking about a man who owns a tee-shirt that says, “It’s Not Going to Lick Itself”.

Poor T. The move has not been easy for him: there are limited employment opportunities on an island; free-roaming geckoes, everywhere; gangs of sea birds swirl overhead, mocking him.

The distance between Minnesota and Florida is not always measured with an odometer.

“I’ve looked everywhere,” he said.

“We’re still talking about your pants, right?”

He sighed. “Yes. They were here one minute…” he sighed again.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Have you been drinking?”

“No. Well, yes. But that’s not it…” he paused. “I just thought we had something special, you know?”

“Are we still talking about your pants?”

“Yes, dammit! I mean, we had an agreement! We would go to work, we would have some beers on the couch! I loved those pants! They were hardly stained and the crotch wasn’t even blown out!”

He went silent.

“It’s because I’m doing day labor, isn’t it? It’s because I haven’t found full-time work. Pearl, what if my pants have left me for someone who has more going on?”

I resisted the urge to enter into a conversation around what may or may not be going on in his pants.

“Look,” I said. “Do you have another pair of pants?”

A rather defeated-sounding sigh: “Yes.”

“Go talk to them,” I said. “You know your pants would never be able to keep a secret. See if your other pants know what’s up.”

I received a call several hours later by a relieved T, who found his favorite pants mixed in with another pair of pants under his bed. Things still seemed a bit muddled, but suffice it to say that there may have been some sort of interrupted rendezvous wherein the pants had suddenly found themselves surrounded by a mob of single, mismatched socks who were, oddly enough, planning a revolt.

T was downright cheerful.

“Did you know those pants were gay? I didn’t!” he chuckled briefly. “I mean, it’s not like they were pleated, you know what I mean?”

There was a pause as he took a drink.

“I threw them out immediately, of course. The socks, I mean, not the pants. I’ve never truly trusted socks, and now I know why.” There was another pause. “Do you think that maybe I instinctively had a distrust of socks for this very reason?”

I said nothing but smiled over the phone.

From the sounds of it, T was smiling, too.

“I’m just so glad everything is back to normal, aren’t you?”

I smiled again.

Glad? Yes.

Normal?

Sure. Why not.