I Ripped My Pants (sorry, I had tech problems)

One autumn day I was walking across my yard, when I slipped on one of the mossy green walnuts that littered my yard. As I lay with my face on the ground, I was in the prime position to really examine the little chilly blades of grass that encircled my face and tickled my inner nose, like one of those pin impression toys[1]. I lifted my head to look out at the splotchy patches of brown and green[2], for which the cold weather was not completely to blame; the yard had been sickly even in the summer, undoubtedly due to my lack of fertilization and watering. As I sat up, I noticed that the knee of my jeans, which had formerly been worn down to the white spindles of fiber that obviously line blue jeans[3], had ripped completely. This shocked me for a moment, because this particular pair of jeans was my favorite, and although I had worn them often over the past several years, they had never faltered. It was as if I was a Spartan commander, and my phalanx[4] had broke formation. I stood up, a cold breeze blowing against my now naked knee, and walked back inside my house to look up the name of a gardener.





[1] The proper name for this device is the pin screen. This amusing toy became popular in the 1980’s, and consisted of a black rectangle of plastic with thousands of pinholes poked through it. Pins, resembling nails, slid through these holes. One end of these pins was the width of the body, like the point of a nail that had been filed down, while the other end was wider, so that the pin could not slide out of the plastic hole. Above the latter end was a clear glass or plastic sheet that would stop the pins from going too far forward, while the former end would press against things, such as faces, raising the pin various amounts, creating an imprint when repeated by each pin, over the surface of the object.
[2] The true color of grass is this deadish brown color. What gives grass its trademark shade of green is actually the chlorophyll that exists inside the blade, which consists of living cells that process water and carbon dioxide into sugar and oxygen. Therefore, I believe my garden of grass is in fact beautiful and perfect, and it is the chlorophyll to which the neighbors should complain.
[3] Denim is simply cotton that is woven in a twill pattern (a pattern of diagonal ribs), and is then pressed under two or more warp fibers. The reverse of this fabric (the inside of the two layers pressed together) is called cotton duck, and is white because the indigo dye used to make blue jeans their color does not reach this part.
[4] The Spartan phalanx does not break. Ever.