Real Battle Keeping My Pants Up on the Bus Today

The cellphone charger I was using as a belt just wasn’t cutting it. My old belt — the one that was actually a belt — had become a casualty of a Sunday afternoon spent at a friend’s place building newspaper forts and then later putting out a small fire.*

There were 40 or so people on the bus. I didn’t know any of them by name, but many had well-established nicknames in my world: Confused Lorne Michaels, Interesting Sweater Girl, Columbine Joe, etc. I felt like the more attractive passengers may have been judging me, but I gave them a pass since I was judging myself pretty harshly on this one too. For the duration of the trip I went through a feverish twenty minutes of sheer paranoia: What if we hit a pothole full of roadkill** and the pinch hitter I brought in to hold my pants up doesn’t cut it? Or what if someone exclaims that their cellphone is dying and they need a charge fast? I mean, we like to think we know how we’d act in that situation, but do we really? The panic on my face was palatable, my stance strategic, my breathing weird.

It was a long twenty minutes, but they were successful ones. Through sheer will and concentration I reached my destination without embarrassing myself in front of Columbine Joe. I think people did see my charger plug dangle out from under my shirt once, but that just adds to the mysterious image I’m trying to cultivate for myself so we’re alright there.


*I realize that these first three sentences seem like a calculated attempt to make me appear as abnormal as possible, but sometimes recent events in life just stack up this way. We’re deep into non-fiction territory on this one, I’m afraid.

**Is the township ever going to investigate this recurring phenomena or am I the only one concerned about this?