The Whitehall Ledger - Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana

One great thing about my job is that it is an equal mix of sitting at a desk and being out in the public for games, events, interviews or taking pictures.

This is really wonderful because I can spend a lot of time just focusing on writing or building pages and getting the paper sent to the printer, while at the same time not becoming a complete hermit that never leaves the office.

Last week I had an experience where I really wanted to leave the office, but there was no way this was going to happen unless it was a mad dash to car for the ride home.

I had sent the newspaper to the printer and was going to grab a few photos, go the bank to make a deposit, and then head to Jefferson Fresh Foods to get some stuff for dinner.

A few minutes before I was going to leave, Melissa had misplaced a disc for the work camera and I bent down to see if I could find it under her desk. As soon as I made my first movement I heard a small tear. The back of my pants had ripped by the pocket. It was an inconvenience because I can’t sew, but not really that big of a deal. It was a very small hole that was covered by the back of my shirt.

I soon forgot about the ordeal and was going to head out away from my desk and into civilization.

I opened the door to the car and needed to put the seat back a little bit. The moment I bent down I heard a much larger noise than I had heard before. It was so loud I thought I had really done some damage to my back, but than I quickly realized that was not the case at all. That small hole in my pants was now a really large one and my underwear was now exposed to Legion Avenue. I wasn’t quite sure what to do, so I just took off in a sprint towards the office door and then realized I better get this deposit to the bank and decided to use the drive through. I’m sure people must have been wondering what was going on when they saw a guy with a gigantic hole in his pants running back on forth on the main street trying to decide what his next step should be.

I didn’t have a deposit slip, but explained myself to the teller and no questions were asked. People are pretty generous when you tell them about ripping your pants.

I’ve had a lot of pants over time, and some that lasted years. This was a high quality pair I had received for Christmas so I’m not so sure what happened. It wasn’t like they were so tight it was cutting of circulation and I was wearing adult skinny jeans.

One time I was out for a night of fun at the University of Wyoming and had something similar happen. Rather than leave the establishment, the bartender stapled the back of my pants and all was right with the world. This hole was so big no stapler would have helped.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get any photos done, but I borrowed a sweatshirt from Melissa and was able to go shopping. I’m sure it probably looked a little bit weird that I had a ladies sweatshirt tied around my waste, but probably not as weird if I would have looked with my boxer shorts exposed to the entire store.

I hope this doesn’t become a normal thing for me, but if that is the case maybe I could bring a spare pair to the office.

Or maybe it would be a good thing. I could forget about bringing a spare set and just sit all day at my desk until I had to run down Legion Avenue to the car.