As we embark upon the holiday season, I find the need to gather my friends, and warn them of shopping, and all the woeful trials and tribulations that lie hidden therein. Take heed.
Several weeks ago I was flipping through one of the local rags that compete for my time, doing my best to ferret out the actually useful information it contained, when an advertisement did what they so rarely do: it caught my eye. “A sale!” I cried. “On pants, at the Bay. 30% off sounds good to me, and these khakis I’m wearing are looking somewhat less than respectable.”
Oh, if only I had known what horrors I would encounter during my ordeal to find clothing for my better and lower half, I would have not even ventured into commercialdom’s glitzy embrace. But I had to look decent for work, really, I did! Off I journeyed, trudging many blocks through the gritty city, fending off panhandlers and drug pushers, until I found myself at that pillar of respectability. One of the oldest, if not the oldest, companies in the world. That store which opened up the Great White North and founded a nation whose inhabitants admit to having sex 150 times each year. Firm of heart and mind, I walked into The Bay’s Men’s Department.
Scouring the aisles, racks, and shelves, I found that which I needed: pants, green, 30 inch waist. In several styles, to boot. I flagged down a clerk, entered a change room, and proceeded to do the old hop and step in and out of several pairs of trousers. Regading my fine visage in the mirror, I forced my narcissistic tendencies to gaze upon the items that I was willing to spend hard-earned credit on, and found that indeed my ass did look better in one pair than the others. However there was one flaw. The pants were flopping around my toes like waves splashing over a drowning puppy. I clumsily staggered out to find another clerk. “These will need to be hemmed, preferably with a dandy cuff.”
“No problem sir,” said the clerk, and he hastily rolled, tucked, pinned and chalked the length of cloth with all the skill of a professional drunkard refilling his glass with moonshine. “Just take those off, bring them back here, and they’ll be done on Tuesday.”
I paid, I left, I returned, and I tried them on. And my troubles began. Those elongated goblins they call tailors had put on a cuff all right. But the trousers were still designed for an anorexic basketball player. “What ho! This isn’t right.”
This clerk (of the lovely female persuasion) offered up advice. “Well, they will shrink when you wash them, sir. In fact, they should have told you when you bought them to take them home, wash them, and then return to have them altered.”
Never have I heard such words. Each one rained blows upon the iceberg that was my mind, until it broke into a million shards of glittering ice suitable for the aforementioned drunkard to place in his preferred chilled beverage. My self-control, forged into a rod of iron by forcing my own rod not to become iron-like while gazing at lovely ladies down at the local nude beach, vanished in a puff of smoke. I turned the firehose of my wit upon the unsuspecting clerk, and prepared to verbally assault her unto, nay even beyond, the point of tears.
“Well, yeah, they’ll shrink half an inch, but we’re talking the length of my foot here. Some of my body parts may be that expandable, but ain’t no way these trousers are gonna shrink that much.” She blinked (Impressive in a verbal duel, aren’t I, dear reader?)
“Okay, tell you what. Take them home, wash them, and we’ll do it right when you get back.” (Zing!)
Reassured in the benevolent intentions of the company, I left, I did laundry, I returned, and I got measured. Returning a few days later, I found the pants to finally be in acceptable condition.
And so my tale should end here, were it not for a second pair of pants already in my possession! These trousers were purchased in the spring from that avantgarde retailer of mass consumerization, known for jump-jiving dancers, WINTER STRIPES, and famous people singing badly. A warp in the weft of my pants from the Gap had failed, and left a patch of threadbareness about halfway down my left thigh. A tear crept down my cheek and buried itself in my goatee.
“God, why has thou forsaken me?” I howled. “Am I forbidden from owning a closet-full of trousers in tip-top condition? Is it my destiny to wear kilts, and have the masses mock me for being knock-kneed?”*
I grabbed the pants, and quick-marched to the Gap.
“Iboughtthesepantsheresixmonthsagoandthey’vegotthisfunkyspotonthemnow.Gimmeanewpair.”
“Okay.Signhere,andgrabapairofftheshelf.”
“Lemmetry’emonfirst.Theyfit.Good.Bye.”
And thus that transaction was completed to my satisfaction. All was good with the world once again. And if you believe that, I’ve got some mining rights I’d like to sell you, please step this way…
For this morning, I grabbed my new green pants out of the closet. In the morning twilight I slid into them, and tried to put on my belt. I made two attempts before it dawned on me: these pants, my new pants, my much-fought-over and returned and retrieved pants, had no belt loops. Not a single one.
AAAAAUUUUGGGHHH!
[sub]*Or rather, that’s what I would have said if I weren’t an atheist. Not believing in a higher power, I said “drat.”[/sub]