I seldom start a day thinking that at a point later in the day I will be standing in an auto shop announcing to several mechanics: “I have to put my hand down my pants…. its not what you think”. Frankly, I’m glad that days do not start like that, or I’d likely spend a great deal of time in bed.

Lets start somewhere near the beginning…

At some point in time during my at work I noticed that the integrity of the zipper on my jeans was lacking. In fact, it was non-operational – a quality I tend to despise in a zipper. Yet, there it was, completely broken, hanging at the bottom of its domain with no desire or capability to do its job. What was I going to do about this? I had a brief flashback to a day at SFU where I noticed an unfortunate fellow student trying to hold up his zipper-less pants. I had suggested a stapler… and well that didn’t seem like that prudent a suggestion at this point in time, what with the privacy of my naughty bits being on the line this time. So I went to the accountants office and asked the paper pushers if they had any safety pins handy. They asked why. Well, er, uhm… my zipper is broken.

Oddly enough one had safety pins in a little bag in his lunch box for just this sort of occasion. Really? My expression must have communicated some surprise because he offered the explanation that at one point in the past he’d “had a bad day”. I understood only too well. I judged him too harshly, as my car now has some safety pins in it.

So things were pinned together and I went on my merry way. Everything was going quite well until things had to be all undone and upon the redoing of my makeshift zipper facsimile things were never quite the same again. Seems some pins were getting bent, and the fit and effectiveness of this solution were getting impaired. At any rate, I forged on with my job and hit the road once again.

So Im kneeling next to a car in a dirty autoshop – you’d think that a really nice dealership with lots of jaguars, Mercedes, Ferrari’s and yes, even a lotus would have a slightly cleaner facility? Anyway, at this point things took a definite turn for the worse and at least one of the safety pins completely deployed, and stabbed me. It could have been in a much worse locale, but still, any sort of impalement I tend to consider undesirable. I tried to stand up, but unfortunately this only impaled me deeper, as well as some sort of twisting and tearing action – and that was even more painful. The mechanics around me had noticed my pain (the yell might have triggered that) and I had their full attention. Thus, I uttered my caveat as to the behaviour I was about to engage in:

“I have to put my hand down my pants…. but its not what you think!!”
“I have a broken zipper – my solution is now stabbing me”.

I am fairly sure these were my exact words, but who can be exactly sure how ones memory acts during such trying times.

I do have to say, I’m not sure I have heard more sincere laughter in quite some time.

So in went my hand, the pin was removed from my body, the others were checked… and I managed to stand up. One of the mechanics had clearly found the need to lean on a bench in order to remain standing – such was the level of his mirth. There may very well have been tears in his eyes. I said “I’m glad everyone finds this so amusing”. More laughter. A supervisor came to see what the fuss was about and I told him that everything was cool – which only caused more peals of laughter. I do not use the word peals lightly… as in peals of thunder.

Sometimes when these sorts of things happen I know I at least have a good story to relate later. This was true in this case, but I can only imagine the stories of this event that others told… and you just know that likely occurred. Sigh…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Crazyness, Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.