Wednesday, November 16, 2005

The Perfect Pants

I watch Malcolm in the middle. It’s funny. Some days its funnier than others. If you don’t know the show, it’s about a family with 5 boys – the oldest has left home, the youngest is a baby, then there’s Dewey who’s still a little boy, Malcolm (in the middle) who’s in his early teens and his older brother who all live at home.

One particular episode made me laugh back in September. Whilst all the amusing and hectic things in the show were happening to the other members of the family, Dewey was looking after the baby. He was telling a story about how their parents led a secret life of luxury behind a locked door in the house. When they finally broke through the locked door they found their dad dressed in a ship's captains outfit, smoking a cigar and their mum dressed in a silk gown, draped with pearls, talking to the butler who was their oldest son saying in a zombie-voice, “you are the best parents in the world, I love you so much.”

They sneaked around the back of the over-stuffed furniture without being seen and disappeared into a second room. This room was completely dark except for a single spot-light illuminating a coat-hangar, invisibly suspended. From the coat-hangar dangled….

“the perfect pants”

“The perfect pants” were white jeans. Completely unstained and un-torn by any other member of the family. They were NEW. When the baby reached out and touched “the perfect pants” an alarm went off and the luxury parents rushed into the room. Dewey, being the smart brother of the family, left the baby in the centre of the room to take all the flack and survived the onslaught by hiding in the dark corners of the room.

I was reminded of this episode by a slanging match entered into by my cousins about who used to submerge the Star Wars toys in the paddling pool when they were kids and who else consequently got in trouble for it.

Since then the phrase “the perfect pants” has been constantly at the forefront of my memory. For riding my bike in the winter has given me my own pair of perfect pants.

They’re not perfect for the same reason that I described in the programme but they fit into a whole philosophy that has been bugging me for quite some time.

I’m not very good at keeping things nice. Put me in a dress, I’ll have mud or food on it in no time. Buy me something fragile and I’ll break it. Give me something precious and I’ll lose it. I have a ton of outdoor and biking gear in the basement that I don’t honestly use anymore and a ton of outdoor clothing I never wear anymore because really, we’ve been so damn house-focused for so long. Now that we have our house we are enjoying the novelty of being in it and sleeping in our own bed. Nothing compares any more. The snug feeling of sleeping bag is not calling to me these days.

But, I realise now that rather than big organised trips away, I live the outdoor life virtually every day here in BC. Right now I manage to cycle three days per week and even when I bring the bug to work, I walk around the mill a lot outside.

So, I have decided to throw caution to the wind, dust off my carefully preserved gear that has been neatly tidied away waiting for a “real adventure” and use it for the every day adventures of commuting, working and living a life.

So thanks to this new philosophy, I have my Karrimor pannier bags strapped permanently to “Green” bike and my windproof thin-pile-lined Buffalo trousers to wear to work and my thermal balaclava to wear under my cycle helmet, two pairs of racing gloves to keep my hands warm and my Specialised fleece-lined, ancle-to-shoulder-braces, chammy-seated, reflective leggings (aka. “The perfect pants”) to ride to work in.

I AM almost completely kitted-out except for the bell… and I really need a decent pair of overshoes now to keep my toes warm. Since my bottle cage / rechargeable battery carrier finally gave-in to a stress fracture this morning (after a crash 5 years ago) I now have a legitimate excuse to go to the bike shop and splurge. He hee!

Aside from that, I can’t resist Blogging DBO’s joke which has made me snigger for over a day:

A man goes to the zoo. There’s only one animal at the zoo – a dog.

It’s a shitzu.

2 comments:

jj said...

I LOVE Malcolm in the middle - it must be about the funniest show to come out of the US.

And I love gear - tho I felt like a geek knowing everything you were talking about. I wear my gear on a daily basis too. But I guess in my job, that's allowed. I'm currently looking for the perfect pants, and think I've found then. Warm, waterproof and cosy.

And the punchline - I'm going to have to steal that one. I almost pee'ed myself.....

Wildefrost said...

Ha! I'll have to remember that joke.