Pants

This is a thing that happened to me one morning a time I don't remember ago.

You're scanning the shelf at Wholefoods wondering which organ to sell so that you can have a sandwich. You're stood on the street corner waiting for the light to change, vying for pole position, preempting the white man so that you're first into the street. Win! You catch the eye of a stranger and before you can smile or sneer depending on whether you won afore mentioned race, their gaze drops to your shoes and travels slowly up the length of your body. They land on  your eyes, glance away, look back, and repeat an abridged version.

We've all experienced the 'body scan' from strangers. That unabashed dissecting of your outfit. The laying to waste of your confidence without even a whisper. The look that leaves you wondering whether you pooped your pants without realizing. "I would know...wouldn't I?" as you take a furtive look over your shoulder. When in twenty plus years have you ever been able to see your own backside without a mirror?

Imagine all that, and then imagine that from a hobo. That's right, a bona fide hobo. Dirty, white beard, shopping cart full of crap, everything that same gray-brown hue, the scent of unwashed folds of flesh, standing, waiting to cross the street with me...looking at me...like that.

"He knows that my pants are held up by safety pins. He knows that they're $20 Forever21 polyester crap that deliver a shock when I walk on carpet and bobble worse than a sheep in a dryer. I must go buy new pants."

So I did.