Snap! There goes the pants

We had the big family birthday party this evening, providing me with another excuse to spend an evening stuffing my face full of food. We arrived with our contributions to the meal in the late afternoon and I began eating. When I was done eating I ate some more. And then when I was done eating that, I had cake.

So maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise a little later when, during a rousing game of front-yard softball, the button on my pants snapped off.

Oh, snap!

Inevitable? Maybe. As a rule, pants don't snap when it's convenient for them to snap, like when I'm at home, not surrounded by large numbers of people who would love nothing more than to see my pants fall down -- not, that is, because they want to see my underpants, but because it would provide them fodder to use against me for years.

Hey, Uncle Dork! Remember that time your pants fell down in the front yard and you scared the neighborhood children so bad that their parents called the cops and you got hauled off to jail for indecent exposure? And better yet, a TV film crew was on hand because they were recording "COPS In The Suburbs" and you became a nationwide celebrity -- so you had to change the name of your blog to Pantsless Dad!! That was AWESOME!! DO IT AGAIN! DO IT AGAIN!

Indeed, I only wish this were the first time. My previous experience was during a family reunion for the in-laws, in Michigan. My shorts, for some reason, had been shrinking over the years. That day, they decided to give up. The button snapped, and I spend what seemed like several days in a park near Ann Arbor Michigan desperately wanting the event to end so I could get back to the hotel and my suitcase and a pair of shorts that actually worked -- and, for that matter, did not cut off the blood circulation to the lower half of my body.

At least in both cases my pants did not fall down, but they so desperately wanted to. Whenever I stood up, my pants wanted to remain sitting and I had to drag them up with me. If I had to carry something with two hands I had to walk like a penguin to keep my shorts from plummeting to the ground. And I routinely pulled up the zipper on my pants, regardless of whether anybody was watching or not, because they either watch me adjust myself or they get a long look at my naked legs and my underpants.

Truth is, they wouldn't see much different than they do normally, because I wear boxer briefs in various colors -- from a distance they'd look like a strange pair of shorts. Yet because they're my underpants, the last line of defense from my pasty-white butt, they remain a fearful object in the general public. Just the thought of Mr. Happy poking his head out for a look around is enough to frighten even the heartiest of nudists.

Fortuitously I managed to successfully keep the pants up without resorting to the use of a safety pin -- which, by the way, is dangerous on pants, I don't care what anybody says. Plus, it violates my policy of keeping sharp objects away from my genitals. And I made it home and changed pants and left the old pair for The Wife to mend, because she has Mad Button-Sewing Skillz.

And now it's time for me to do about 4,000 situps.