Undone

Recently I noticed that sitting in my car was uncomfortable. I felt a bit better standing up or reclining in a chair, but sitting upright in my car bothered my torso in a startling way. Not a stranger to medical mishaps, I was only a bit worried until one afternoon when I heard a sound after my butt hit the seat.

Snap.

The tightness in my torso disappeared. I lifted my shirt and saw what relieved and despaired me: two halves of an open button clasp splayed in different directions, held together by a zipper that slowly descended as I leaned forward. My gut was free at last.

My dependable metabolism is slipping. Since that moment I have worn my 13-year-old cargo shorts with the fly button undone. The shorts feel like elastic forgiveness. I feel better in the simplest of ways.

The one drawback is that I have a tendency to scratch my stomach and chest, so my method reveals itself. I obviously love self deprecating humor, but the news sounds different when I am not the one reporting.

"Your button is undone," someone said.

"I know," I responded. "I like it like that." Embrace it, I thought. If you think it's sexy, then it's sexy. Own it. Love it. Scratch it. I used to say I wanted this to happen because I thought it would not. It happened; I do not like it. But I think I do not like it because I did not write about it before other people told me about it.

I planned to run a bit in the cool mornings, but I cannot wake up before 10. Right now I have no plans at 8:45 on a Saturday night, but I do have a recently revived iPod, a workout playlist and a zipper that hangs on like two lovebirds twirling each other in an open pasture.

Let's go.