Pantsless

As the child, sister, and niece of scientists, I have a pretty hard time believing in magic – much though I always wanted to.  *Superstition* - now, that’s easy, it’s just a matter of silly habits.  But actually believing in sympathetic, mystical, or merely physical magic; I’m no good at it.

Yet, since the Conference on October 18-19, there has been a mysterious and complete, inexplicable disappearance in my life, and I am at a perfect loss.

Literally.

This past spring or summer, after Admin’s Day, I used the gift certificate they gave the secretaries in thanks, to buy a simply spiffing pair of palazzo pants.  They were comfortable, went with tons of my things, would have seen me through every season, and were comfortable, stylin’, and flattering.  In short, the holy grail.

I’m saying these were excellent pants.

And the things have either:  run away from home, or simply defied the law of Object Permanence.

I have looked in every closet eighteen times.  With a FLASHLIGHT.  I’ve ransacked the shelves at the back of the closet, pulled back the old box shoe rack to look behind it, inspected the items on every single hanger time and time again, gone through the cabinetry in there dozens of times, looked in the floor, peered in the dark again and again.  Every closet.  Guest room, master, wardrobe, foyer, linen closet upstairs.  Dressers too, guest room and master, because there’s been a seasonal wardrobe shift since the Con.

Nada.

I’ve done laundry countless times, of course, since mid-October.  And these pants steadfastly refuse to miraculously appear – not on the clotheslines in the basement, not in the basket, not in the machines, not in the trashcan in the basement, not on the disused plumbing fixtures in the middle of the floor, not on the ironing boards.  Not behind the washing machine nor dryer.  Not in the kitchen cabinets nor drawers.  Not in any of the storage dressers.  Not in the library on the DVD shelves.

Nope.

I have looked, even, in the mending, which happens to be in my office these days.  I thought, maybe I forgot an the hem was going, maybe I put the pants in the quick-fix pile I keep and never get to quickly.

Every so often, I think of some new place to look (usually:  again).  Every so often, I look.  Again.

Zilch.

It’s maddening, bewildering.  Inexplicable.  This mystery will not be splicked, and heck if I have not tried.  And tried.  And tried.

I’m beginning to think I’ll find an agent (and maybe even be sold) before these damned pants will reappear and satisfactorily explain themselves.



 

Being a woman, of course, I have *looked* for new palazzo pants.  For second-best, for something to settle for.  For (cue that Who riff) a Sub-sti-chute.



Oh, but NONE of the pants I’ve perused desultorily are the same.  Most are cheap, an *awful* lot are not black, are very heavily patterned.  None want to be replicants, rebound stand-ins for The Only Pants I Ever Loved.  None is made with as well-draped a textile, none has the weight or quality of The Missing.  Some veer perilously close to being SLACKS.  Heavens forfend.

I do not wear slacks.

I *can* not wear my palazzos.  I can’t do the great sweaer outfits they’d have been so perfect for, with my cute little shoe-booties, sophisticated colors, and long scarves, warm around my neck.

I cannot wear them: for Thanksgiving.  Horrors!  They’d have been so good for Thanksgiving.  Their kind, yoga-style (non-elastic-banded) waistband – not an option, for the holiday when it would be so very welcome.  Their long, floppy legs, soft and fine for napping in.

Alack!

I cannot wear them in a car, I cannot wear them in a bar.  I cannot wear them, Sam I’m Not.  I cannot wear them, no matter what.



But the real problem is something deeper, something more profound, even, than That Perfect Garment, the comfortable, washable, versatile and good looking pants.

No.  More desperately, and more to the ultimate, mind-deteriorating, insanity-inducing point:  I can’t figure out … What. the. Hell.

It’s a COGNITIVE torture, this terrible case of non-presence.

My brain honestly cannot cope with what has become of these pants.  Never mind not being able to find them.  Not being able to understand what could have become of these things, this item in my care, this bit of flotsam in the material blessings over which I carry stewardship.  THAT’S the problem.


It would be preferable to believe that (a) my pants don’t actually possess the power of teleportation, (b) someone didn’t come in my house just to steal nothing in the world but these precious pants, and (c) I didn’t forget that awkward moment when, apparently, I was driving home from the Con, shucked my pants while in the car, threw them out the window with a whoop of deranged glee, freeing myself from these inexplicable pants, and apparently walked back in my house naked from the waist down.  *Erm*

I’m pretty serious about that (c), too.

Unless I have lost my way around a perfectly ordinary house I’ve lived in for FIFTEEN YEARS now … these pants simply do not exist anymore.  They are nowhere in evidence, in the only possible place I’m capable of *comprehending* they should be.  They are nowhere to be found inside my house.

And yes, I have looked under all the beds.  With that flashlight, and multiple times, again.  And no, I never lent them to anybody, nor took ‘em to a dry cleaner.

I take nothing to a dry cleaner, man.

These pants appear to have renounced molecular cohesion, shivered themselves into nonexistence, and dispersed, to play with the dust bunnies, mold, cave crickets, and dust.  Either that, or they actually honestly don’t exist, even in particulate form, whatsoever anymore.

They’re chimera pants.

Dare I say:  they are immaterial.



*Ducks to avoid the response to that last line*

What’s inexplicable in your life, this Thanksgiving?