There’s a Hole in My Pants

And I don’t give a damn.

I have a favorite pair of pants that I wear…let’s just say, “a lot.” They’re black, yoga-style and very comfortable. As the saying goes, “they move with me.”

Apparently, they’ve been moving with me longer than they should as I spotted a whole on the ass-side this morning. A little one, not large enough to reveal my scanties, but a hole nonetheless.

Because I wash these pants frequently, it stands to reason that the fabric has worn a bit thin. As has my world-view. Thin, and tired.

As I pulled them on to go for a walk, it occurred to me that I didn’t give a shit about the hole and the feeling wasn’t freeing, as I might attest if I was in a more positive head-space, but instead, it was disturbing.

It disturbs me that I no longer care. That a wire inside my brain has come loose and I’m not the person I once was. Like the rest of us, my “sheltering-in-place” has put me in my place. A fucking scary place.

With the prospect of the quarantine lasting for another year or longer, why should I give a flying fuck if my clothes are ragged? Or my ends are split? Or my nails are unpolished? Or my collection of red lipsticks has been gathering dust in a drawer unused, for several months now?

That last one kills me as scarlet lips are my signature. But who cares, right? I don’t. My husband certainly doesn’t. Our cats could give a shit. As long as Mommy feeds them, they’re good.

Oh, I still believe in daily showers and brushing and flossing and shaving my gams and all that but what’s the point in all the other stuff?

I used to love getting ready for a night on the town. Slipping into clingy pants and an equally-clingy top. Letting my wavy hair fall past my shoulders. Carefully applying a red lip. Dabbing on a musky scent.

I felt sexy. Womanly.

Now I feel like an old Birkenstock that someone tossed in a trash barrel somewhere. Well worn. Well worn. But not stinky. Never that as I do have my standards, crumbling though they are.

I’m wondering how many of you are feeling the same? I’m thinking the positivity wave has just about run its course, no?

I mean, how many loaves of bread can we bake? How many puzzles can we solve? How many TV shows can we binge-watch?

How much alcohol can we drink? Quite a lot, I discovered. Boatloads. Queen Mary-sized boatloads.

Sometimes quantity has it all over quality.

In the beginning, all of us tried very hard to keep our game faces plastered on. “We’ll get through this,” we told ourselves. So we Facetimed. We Zoomed and Skyped. We decluttered and swept the dust bunnies from under our beds. We learned new recipes and tried them out on our willing, if skeptical, families.

We did it all. All the right stuff. But now I have a hole in my pants and all that positive stuff is trickling through that hole and down to the floor where I just stepped in it. Like a dog turd. But this one I can’t scrape off my shoe.

Because I suffer from OCD, I still clean the house regularly as I can’t abide dust or clutter. It makes me anxious. And when I get anxious…”Look out, Sherry. You’re gonna get hurt!”

“Hurt” as in I’m going to overdue the vino. Not a good look for me. I’ve tried it on countless times in the past and the result is always the same: (I’ll let you fill in the blank, here.)

Now, I get it that a hole in one’s pants may not seem like a big deal, but it doesn’t take much for that itty bitty hole to turn into one big rent in the fabric of our lives. Because once we stop caring, we’re goners.

I’m not sure I’m ready for that, but if our pandemically-challenged situation doesn’t improve, I may be that naked broad running down the middle of the road, a beleaguered cop whose department has just been defunded, hot on my tail.

Maybe I’d get a book deal out of it.

So, do you, like me, find your standards slipping? Even a little bit? If so, I, and certainly many in this fine community would love to hear about it. We can bolster each other up. Remind each other to stay hygienically-safe and sanitized. Because we’re still human beings, right? RIGHT?

With that in mind, I believe it’s time for a tag. I haven’t done it in a while so I’m going to ask the following people, “What’s the hole in your pants?”

Rip it up, P.G. Barnett, Joe Luca, Chris Hedges, Helen Cassidy Page, Caroline de Braganza, Denise Shelton, Kira Dawn, Gurpreet Dhariwal, Tina L. Smith, Charles Roast, Timothy Key, Desiree Driesenaar, Kim McKinney, Roz Warren, Bebe Nicholson, Tree Langdon ♾️, Britni Pepper, Rasheed Hooda and anyone else who wants to air their shit.

And please pass this along as I know I’m inadvertently leaving many writers out.

Sherry McGuinn is a slightly-twisted, longtime Chicago-area writer and award-winning screenwriter. Her work has appeared in The Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, and numerous other publications. Sherry’s manager is currently pitching her newest screenplay, a drama with dark, comedic overtones and inspired by a true story.

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