I just ordered a pair of convertible pants, you know the pants where you can zip off the lower legs, and change them into shorts. They’re great! I mean sure, usually it’s too much trouble to stop, pull off your shoes, unzip the legs of the pants and drag them off, stow them somewhere, and put your shoes back on. So you usually just suffer through the heat. But, if you really, really wanted to, you could convert them into shorts. And that’s awesome, just ask any guy. All clothes ought to be convertible. Long sleeve shirts convertible into short sleeve shirts, regular ties convertible into bow ties, regular glasses convertible into a pair of welding goggles.
Mary, on the other hand, seems to have a pretty unreasonable dislike of the wonderfulness that is convertible pants. I can tell, because I’m pretty attuned to her moods. Like when she says, “Those pants are really awful, and people caught wearing them deserve to get beaten like a rabid rattlesnake.” Which I think everyone could agree seems like a viewpoint that’s veering a bit towards the extreme. Or maybe it’s the way she exclaims, “Oh, hell, no!” whenever I pick up a pair, just to look at, when we’re at Eddie Bauer, you know?
I had to order a new pair of zip-off pants because yesterday, this conversation, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, occurred:
Me: “You know, I can’t find any of my zip-off pants, anywhere.”
Her: “You don’t have any zip-off pants.”
Me: “Of course I do. I have a couple of pairs. I wear them when I hike. And when we’re traveling.”
Her: “No, you don’t. I’m pretty sure I’d remember them.”
Me: “What are you talking about, I’ve worn them plenty of times.”
Her: “No, I think you’re imagining that. I told you zip-off pants look tacky, and you said, ‘Really?’ And I said, ‘yes’ and you said ‘Okay maybe I don’t really want the zip-off pants,’ so you never bought any.”
Me: “But I have a pretty clear memory of wearing some sort of convertible pants on that hike to the reservoir a couple of months ago. Are you telling me I imagined that?”
Her: “Honey, I’m not trying to accuse you of anything. But, you do spend a lot of time walking around the house, muttering to yourself.”
Me: “I do, sometimes, but that’s just because I’m trying to remember where I left my zip-off pants, not because my sanity is more than usually questionable.”
Her: “And I think you answered your own question.”
Me: “I did?”
Her: “Yes.”
I swear someday I’m going to find out there’s a plastic box down in the basement that’s labeled wrapping paper (there are at least a dozen plastic bins labeled ‘wrapping paper,’ which is a whole ‘nother story), that contains multiple pairs of zip-off pants, sunglasses that Mary declared were only really popular on Starsky and Hutch, and a bunch of hats. Really neat hats, like a snap brim fedora that I once thought I had bought while on a trip, but I’ve been reliably informed that never happened.