Prisoner who learned to change pants while ankles were chained

[Gary_T]

@Velocity

A long time ago, I read about the experience of a prisoner in an Asian prison, I think sometime in the 1970s. While in prison, he learned how to change his pants…while his ankles were chained.
Uh…what?
I have been pondering this factoid for a long time and I cannot comprehend how this is physically possible. It seems that no matter how you would put on or take off a pair of pants, the ankle manacles would get in the way. How could this possibly be done? (assuming that “cheating” methods like cutting open the pants with scissors, etc. aren’t used.) How could even a Houdini do it?

It’s a simple, if non-intuitive, topological problem. We had a thread about it eight years ago. Practically speaking, it just requires enough space between the person’s leg and the ankle band to feed one leg’s worth of the trousers through.