Not meant for your leg

There's another hole in my pants. The incense burnt a freaking hole into my pants.


Ahem. Excuse the brashness. Let me explain.

You see, I take excellent care of my clothes. I launder my T-shirts, fold my underwear, and iron my dress shirts when necessary. (And sometimes, when I'm feeling extra nurturing, I tuck my socks in at night.) But for some God-forsaken reason, I can't seem to protect my damn pants from getting holes drilled into them.

(As odd as that sounds.)

Victim #1. Gap khakis.

Sometime in high school, my friend Bryan lent me his mountain bike for test-cruising. Seeing this as an opportunity to polish my long-rusty biking skills, I road around his block at slow velocity. On the second lap through, however, my leg sleeve got caught on the bike chain and—well, let's put it this way: when you thread loose textiles through a high speed conveyor, the end result is something of a giant sewing machine. The sleeves were obliterated forcing me to duct tape my pants from the thigh down. (The tape failed eventually forcing me to simply roll them up—like shorts.) And no—I could not sew the pants back together.

Victim #2. Blue, newly bought sweatpants.

Junior year college was the year of the long board. My friends and I shredded campus facilities with illegal but extreme veracity. Cruising through lobbies, slamming into walls—it was as tasteless and unbelievable as old sitcom humor. Anyway, one day, on my way to class, my friends dared me to ride a long board while lying on my stomach. Given my experience at the time, it should have been a simple task. But it wasn't. I was cruising peacefully on my belly until the board started to jolt—my sweatpants had gotten caught on the hind right wheel. The result? A thigh hole the size of a tennis ball.

Victim #3. Hand-me-down corduroys. And me.

Feeling generally shitty about financial life and needing to clear my head, I took a stroll down to my old grammar school—at the peak of midnight. Mind you, I don't live in a peaceful, mild-mannered suburbia—I live in Jersey City next to one of the most ghetto neighborhoods in town. However, that risk did not process. In my depressed state, physical safety and logic were the least of my concerns. Needless to say, fate paid me for my recklessness and I was eventually mugged. In the ensuing scuffle for my wallet, the thugs ended up tearing a near perfect strip along my corduroy belt line. In layperson's terms, the tear left my ass completely exposed.

As odd as that sounds.

Victim #4. Green cargo pants from Goodwill.

In need of a wardrobe revamp, my friend Adrian and I visited the local thrift store searching for some low-budget treasures. My gold came in the form of well-fitting, green cargo pants. At five dollars, the purchase, I felt, was a steal. That was, until I got back home and realized that the there was a hole on the right ass cheek. With no bike chain or long board in sight, I could safely assume the hole had been there all along. But I guess that was my fault for not checking.

Victim #5. Gray sweat pants.

I enjoy neutral colors because of their visual versatility. Maybe that's why I was so keen of the gray sweat pants I had recently purchased at Modell's—they were soft, cheap, and great as pajamas. Anyway, one quiet night, my friend had the pleasant idea of lighting incense cones on one of my storage shelves. With no free candle holder in sight, she opted to make one out of thick, cardboard like paper. (You see where this is going.) Attention diverted, we left the incense until, of course, the smell of smoke began proliferating throughout the room. To my chagrin, the incense cone had burnt a hole through the makeshift concoction and, after falling though my cage of a shelf, had burnt a similarly-shaped hole—yeah—through my coveted, gray sweat pants.

Another thigh hole.

A word of advice to you (and to myself): take care of your pants. And they'll take care of you.