The Brotherhood of the Unravelling Pants

By Kyle Marksteiner

Last September, I attended a United Way conference in Albuquerque and brought both of my suits—the blue one and the gray one. It was a two-day conference, and I wanted to represent Eddy County well.

When I got home, I noticed that one pair of pants was badly ripped in a deeply personal area. I wish there were some interesting story there, but I believe it was just a case of being old and somewhat large. Let’s just hope that said rip took place after the public presentation portion of the summit. I bet this sort of thing never happens to James Bond.

Time passed, and a couple of weeks ago, I took my surviving suit (let’s call it Suit A) to the dry cleaners to prepare for an upcoming board meeting. Later that night, however, I noticed a suit hanging in my closet, looking healthy and untorn (hereafter known as Suit B).

I started to wonder if I’d mistakenly taken in the torn pants to the dry cleaner. I took the other suit down and inspected the front carefully and saw no rip. So, shoot, I must have dropped off the wrong one.

Two days later, I dropped off Suit B at the dry cleaner and picked up Suit A. I inspected Suit A when I got home and also found no tear in the pants.

Wait, what? Was there some sort of miraculous mending? Did small gnomes come in at night and fix my pants? I specifically recalled one pair of pants being torn, though by this point, I could no longer recall which pair of pants was whole and which had a hole.

(See what I did there?)

The dry cleaner did not have Suit B ready for me when I called a few days later. The employee said there was an issue. I tried two days later and still no luck. Finally, a manager called to apologize. Apparently, there was an issue at the dry cleaner, and the entire backside of my pants was torn!

They felt really bad and offered me a store credit, which I initially accepted.

But then I got to thinking. Maybe, when I inspected the second pair of pants for holes, I’d, um, checked the wrong side of the pants. Maybe that pair of pants already had a large hole in the backside when I dropped them off at the dry cleaner, but I’d only inspected the front. Maybe I should have performed a more detailed inspection, front and back, before assuming magical tailor gnomes were fixing my wardrobe at night.

I found a photo I’d taken of the torn pants back in September and, sure enough, hypothesis confirmed. To borrow from nautical terminology, it was a stern issue, while I’d been checking the bow.

I called the dry cleaner back and apologized for the misunderstanding. I certainly didn’t want them to think I was trying to scam my way into blaming them for tearing my pants!

Boy, would that have been embarrassing!