“It’s a nice day,” Alicia had said. “It’s sunny outside. There’s no school. So don’t you damned well dare turn that computer on, you hear me? Do something you can only do at your age; use your imagination.”
So Jeffrey did. And as usual, it got him straight into trouble.
First he looked outside. The birds were shining and the sun was singing. Boring.
Then he looked inside. The television had been sold last month and the computer was a forbidden zone. Besides, Saul was on it right now, doing Excel sheets. Boring.
Then he wandered around the house staring at things. Boring, boring, boring, boring.
Finally he went up to his room, took out all his clothing, and started rearranging it by colour. This was exactly how boring Jeffrey’s day was, and this was why he thought what he thought when he picked up his last set of trousers to put them away, and what he thought was this.
Hey, I wonder what it’s like to be pants?
And Jeffrey put away his pants, and he went downstairs and had some cereal, and he even washed the bowl out of sheer, unimaginable, mind-bending boredom, but as he went through all the motions the question nagged and nibbled at him. What was it like to be pants, anyways? Who could say, for who had tried? Who would try?
And why not Jeffrey?
There were things he needed to do, he knew this well. Anything worth doing had to be taken in steps, the proper steps, or else it would all fall to pieces. Willy-nilly did nobody good.
First, he had to think like pants. Jeffrey thought long and hard, long and hard, until he realized that that wasn’t working at all. Then he thought long and floppy, long and flat, he creased his brow and plaited his fingers, he filled his mind with corduroy and denim.
Second, he had to act like pants. Jeffrey let his legs hang loose and tucked his arms away into nowhere. He shrugged up his shoulders until his neck was as broad as his waist and he opened his mouth so long he could’ve swallowed a fireplace log. He shimmied until he was looser than a half-empty bag of helium.
Third, he had to be pants. Which, quite suddenly, he was. And this pleased him mightily, for in all of today so far he’d been sure he’d never get to do anything interesting.
As pants, the whole world was at Jeffrey’s disposal, if he should so choose it. He billowed and bustled himself and in the end discovered that his best bet for locomotion was a sort of sailing flap flap flap, which let him move about the house in a fashion not unlike a squid. This so pleased Jeffrey that he almost failed to notice the first great challenge of his panthood, which was that Bop heard him flailing about the kitchen floor, came to investigate, and, filled with protectiveness at the sight of the wild pants dancing about his family’s kitchen, set upon him with ferocious yapping.
This was unpleasant to Jeffrey, who’d been having a good time. He had no ears, but the sound was still offensive, and so he moved to shoosh Bop with a warning pat on the muzzle, as was common. But he’d forgotten his pantish condition and failed to analyze its likely effect on the dog, and as he drew nearer the poor animal broke into the most terrorized yelps and launched itself into an embarrassingly lousy display of canine self-defence.
It was a tragic battle fought that day beneath the kitchen lamps, one with no true cause for celebration taken by either party. For Bop, it was an endless, fruitless struggle to find a part of his foe that wasn’t denim. For Jeffrey, it was a steadily-growing realization of how pleasant it truly was to have hands by virtue of not having any whatsoever, or even any arms.
In the end, the silence of the scuffle was broken by Bop’s disheartened whimper as the confusion overwhelmed him, and he fled to his bed in the corner, tail tucked away and spirit in tatters until someone gave him a treat and told him what a good handsome boy he was. Jeffrey was not entirely pleased by this outcome, but he found it acceptable enough. Particularly as yesterday Bop had peed on his carpet. That would teach him. Nobody messed with pants.
That trial surmounted, Jeffrey began to wander about the house some more, taking stock of his home as pants. A surprising amount of it was now quite difficult to get at, it seemed. Latches were awkward, doorknobs were impossible, and even sliding under doors – which he would’ve assumed prior to his pantsing would be the optimal modus operandi of pant locomotion – was an unlikely task, due to the relative sturdiness and thickness of his pantish self. The one door ill-fitting enough to permit him access this way was the basement, and it was with great relief and anticipation that Jeffrey slipped into that place. He’d always been a little nervous to go down there alone, but as pants he felt indestructible, filled with optimism and the fire of youth in a frame much sturdier and more deftly-sewn than before.
Here Jeffery ran wild and free, cavorting amidst the cobwebs. He toyed with power tools, sashayed through scads of half-crumbled wood and metal, and wove recklessly in and out of rows of carelessly arranged bottles with interesting hazard symbols on their fronts, one of which he immediately spilled all over his pants-front.
This was the second great challenge of Jeffrey’s panthood, and a fierce one it was. This particular bottle’s little picture showed a skeleton hand on it, and at first Jeffrey was hopeful for his future as he possessed neither a skeleton nor hands. But then a strange sensation broke out across him – like an itch crossed with a witch – and he realized to his dawning horror that he was staining, staining away as if he’d been struck with ketchup.
If Bop had been a test of bodily fortitude, this was a trial of spiritual rigor. Jeffrey fought the stain on a conceptual level, controlling his breathing – well, creasing – with the utmost care and a will of iron. Go away, he told the stain, to himself. There is no place for you here, not in my body. I am me and you are you and we shall remain separate. Abandon this place, abandon these pants. Be no more here, be more elsewhere, and we shall both be happy. Go away. Go away. Go away go away go away GO AWAY.
And just then, just as Jeffrey was about to give up, the stain didn’t go away. But by then he’d tuckered himself clean out with the intensity of his thoughts, so he decided it was all right anyways. He had won the battle – not with the stain, but with his own inability to accept himself. And that was truly the lesson that needed to be learned that day.
By now Jeffrey was growing lonely, as the basement was most unsociable but for cockroaches, and he wound his way upstairs in search of companionship. But he wanted his societal introduction as pants to be spectacular, and be spectacular on his own terms. A grand surprise would do, it would, and so he prepared himself accordingly. He folded himself up at the foot his parent’s bed. He’d been quiet for some time now, and he knew that soon either Alicia or Saul would grow wary and begin a hunt for him. They would check their room last, of course, and when they’d just turned to go outside and re-check everywhere else he would spring up and surprise them. Then they would jump, and that would show them.
So Jeffrey waited. And waited.
And waited. Saul was still working on an Excel sheet, if you’ll recall, and Alicia was phoning clients. These were not things that could be rushed through without consequence, and they took themselves seriously, solemnly, and above all, very slowly. And as the sun was so awfully nice and warm through the window, and as Jeffrey was so tired from all his previous exertions, he fell quite peacefully asleep in the warm glow of noon.
He was roused from his slumber by a large hand on his neck, a most curious sensation. Saul had finished his work, the household finances lay demolished for another day, and he had finally roused himself enough to get dressed and go out for groceries. For such business as this pajamas simply would not do, and what did he have here at the end of his bed but a pair of pants such as would suit him – or rather, pant him – most well.
This was the final great challenge of Jeffrey’s panthood, a test of nerves. Specifically, reflexes. There were only a scant few seconds ‘twixt wakefulness and the very real threat of being donned and worn for Jeffrey, but he was young yet and possessed a reaction time that would put a fly to shame. Instinct was yet his ally, and at the sheer horror of the oncoming threat that was his father’s posterior he immediately let loose a most un-pantish yelp of great size and vigor, making Saul jump half a foot and put half his foot through the laundry basket, with no less noise than Jeffrey had made.
There was a bit of kerfuffle and a lot more confusion and consternation as Alicia came rushing into the bedroom to comfort her shouting husband and confront his agitated pants, but then Jeffrey began to make the most un-pantlike gestures, and soon they were all able to explain the whole thing out.
You know.
By pantomime.
When it was all said and done, Alicia started laughing and couldn’t stop; but Saul just sat down on the bed and cried. “I don’t want to have a son who’s pants!” he sobbed. “I was just getting used to having a son with two arms and two legs and a torso in there somewhere, and now I’ll have to get used to it all over again!”
Jeffrey was distressed to see his father so upset, and quickly attempted to unpants himself, in order to placate him. But try as he might, wriggle as he pleased, crease and plait as he would, he found to his rapidly-increasing alarm that he seemed to continue to be most panted.
“All right,” said Alicia tearily, wiping away a last few giggles with the back of her hand, “then let’s fix this. I know just the trick for getting rid of a case of pants.”
So she grabbed Jeffrey by his neck – kindly – and dragged him back down to the basement, flap flap flap. And she put him in the washing machine, added soap, flipped a dial and twiddled a button, and then she sat on the lid of the washing machine until the flaps and creaks turned into thumps and shouts, and she reached in and pulled out a very damp and agitated little boy by the scruff of his neck, like a puma with her kitten.
“Now, what have we learned today?” Alicia asked Jeffrey, as she wrapped him in a towel and hauled him off to get changed.
“Never to use my imagination for anything,” said Jeffrey.
Alicia rolled her eyes at this, but decided it was too late in the day for moralizing anyways, even on a Saturday. So she gave him a bowl of cereal for lunch and let him have a turn at the computer, because after all, hadn’t she been just the same at his age?
And that was the last time Jeffrey was pants. It had been an exciting experience at the start, but by the end he’d considered the whole project to be disarmingly pointless.
Besides, he didn’t like any playtime that ended in him getting collared. If he’d been born a decade or two earlier, his mother reminded him, he likely would’ve gotten belted.