"Yes, sir, Captain Tightpants." - Kaylee, Firefily

Houston, reflected. If I only had a mirror, I could reflect it again and again until it was itsy-bitsy teeny, perhaps small enough to reach the critical density to make an itsy-bitsy black hole. I always worry about that when I go clothes shopping, so I never look in those creep three-way mirrors. I just get worried that I might collapse in on myself. Or that my butt might look big.

I sat down after lunch.

When I described this situation to The Mrs., I asked her what the worst possible noise you could hear when sitting down was. The Mrs. said, “Riiiiiiiiiiip.”

Right. Not so good.

It all started at lunch.

I was being good, and went to work out at lunch rather than bury my head in a vat of grease and pasta bunch of e-mails. Working out at lunch removes a lot of strain from the day, and it generally makes me feel like a velociraptor in a room full of fuzzy kittens. So, after grappling (I originally typed in “grapping” which, for whatever reason, Spellchecker® seems okay with. I think that the people at Microsoft™ just made up a bunch of comon typo werds and inserted them so that the bossez of the world could sit around and snicker at the typos while they bathed in champagagagne, or whatever they do in the afternon) with cardio equipment, I showered and headed back to the office. Must not have dried my legs off sufficiently, because when I sat the material in my slacks stuck to my thighs.

Riiiiiiiiiip.

Yup. My pants had split a seam right at my hiney.

The first thought you have is, “Hey, maybe nobody will notice.”

If you have a functioning brain and have ever worked in an office, you realize it only takes ONE person to notice, then EVERYONE will hear. Heck, I remember one time a boss (a LONG time ago) went to the bathroom and came back with a six-foot tail of toilet paper tucked perfectly into the dead center of his back. His office was right next to mine, so, when he sat down and found that he had acquired a Charmin™-based appendage, he immediately showed up at my office door, face a bit red form embarrassment.

“How ‘bout them (insert football team here)?”

I never let him know that I saw him bouncing back to his office like a sixty-year old Tigger with a paper tail. Also, I didn’t tell anybody in the office. Heck, I’m not sure I liked anybody in that office. But, remembering John Wilder’s Rule that it only takes ONE person to notice, then EVERYONE will hear, now his temporary additional limb is now preserved for history.

I grapped my stapler and headed for the bathroom.

I stapled the seam on my pants shut using about sixty staples, cleverly avoiding stapling the sleeve of my shirt to my pants heiny-holding area..

Immediately, I grapped my car keys and headed to buy some more pants.

“Umm, gotta go . . . be right back.”

In the anonymity of a Houston mall at lunch, it’s not so bad if the seam cuts loose, but the glittery metallic flashes from the staples might have been hard to explain.

I purchased a pair of new pants, of exactly the same color (but two sizes bigger in the legs) because I didn’t want to explain that I’d ripped the seat out of my pants. That would also get around in the office.

Back at the office on the escalator, it felt exactly like one of the staples had detached itself from my pants and, using all of its stapley-sharpness, had embedded itself in my underwear.
It’s not easy to check if you have a staple in your underwear on an escalator and not get noticed. Just trust me on that last one.