We meet furtively in the predawn darkness.
“Did you get it?” I ask.
“Yeah,” my co-conspirator answers, cautiously passing over a bundle that, judging from the hesitant way he is handling it, might as well contain a leaky test tube full of military grade anthrax.. The truth, however, is much worse: my co-conspirator is my husband, and the bundle is none other than Clementine’s dirty pants.
Note that I didn’t say Clementine’s dirty blue pants, or even Clementine’s dirtiest pants–to say either would imply that the pants under discussion are, in fact, one of a set; that somewhere in the Universe there is, perhaps, another pair of Clementine’s pants–maybe even three, or four. No, unfortunately, when I say that these are Clementine’s dirty pants I mean it in the same way I might say that I looked up at the Sun–the one, the only, the Sun. In fact, this pair of pants is so very singular that I am surprised they aren’t instead known as pant.
Thus the skulduggery of our predawn pants raid–since the pants are literally one of a kind, it is only by sneaking into Clementine’s room under the cover of darkness and “sniffing them out” (no bloodhound required) that we are able to not only retrieve the pants, but whisk them away to their long anticipated appointment with the washer. (Although, by the time we do manage a retrieval mission–she often sleeps with them, as befits their rarified status–the pants are usually so hopelessly crusty that I am always a little surprised that they haven’t simply gotten up and climbed into the washing machine on their own; or at least started doing other semi-evolved things like discovering fire, using tools, and declaring their candidacy for the 2008 presidential elections.)
Now, before anyone decides to start a campaign collecting spare pants for “poor, pants-less Clementine,” please know this: when I say that these are Clementine’s only pair of pants, what I mean is that they are the only pair of pants that she will wear. She owns plenty of pants–enough, I am fairly sure (no, make that absolutely sure) to carpet a small room three times over– but, by virtue of all the others being “too tight, too loose, too short, too stiff, too soft,” and even “too chalky” (I have yet to figure that one out), they have all been declared, at one time or another, unfit to wear. In other words, they are all pantsona non grata.
And before you say, “well then, she is obviously a girl of fine and discerning taste–why not just let her pick out her own pants from now on,” please also understand that the above cited list of trouser rejects are her own picks: they are all pants that she herself declared “perfect” in the dressing room, but, for varied and mysterious reasons (see above), all somehow failed to make the cut once they arrived back home from the mall (and after, of course, all the tags were removed). And yes: I know about growth spurts, but growth spurts aren’t the issue here; some of these pants don’t even hold their exalted status long enough for her to put on a post-mall living room fashion show. In fact, I suspect that if it were possible for her to try them on again immediately after buying them–if every cash register came equipped with its own dressing room–then they would not even make it that far.
I’m sure that if I really tried I could figure out what it is that makes one particular pair of pants “the chosen ones” at one particular point in time; something to do with the Aztec calendar and solar flares, no doubt. But, for now, its all I can do to know that there can be only one (pair)–and how best to get that one into the wash.