Bad pants.

It's not so bad when you have bad pants and you stay inside. Yes, there's always the chance that the house will burn down and you'll escape, but the only pants you'll have left are the bad ones you were wearing when you went out the window. There's a greater chance that someone will come to the door, and you forget you have bad pants on, and answer it, instead of hiding behind a wall and pretending no one is home, as you should.

I had bad pants.

This was a pair of sweats that I think I got in a drugstore. Extremely comfortable, of course, but nothing I'd wear in public, mainly because they didn't have pockets. You need pockets for your keys, your wallet, your phone. I'd worn them to take the trash out in the wee hours before the sun came up. Aside from that, these were strictly indoor pants. You couldn't wear them to do yard work; they were too soft. A stray rock from the lawn mower would rip right through them. These were bad pants, but they were bad loafing pants, not bad working pants, and I was okay with that.

My wife hated them not for their impracticality or their lack of pockets; she hated the color. I thought of them as lavender, but looking at the Benjamin Moore Color Gallery, I'd guess they were closest to Oriental Iris. Which is kind of an odd color for a man's pants, even sweat pants, I admit. But my wife didn't have to wear them, and as long as I kept inside with them and didn't answer the door, it was fine.

I confess it was a non-optimal color. 

Then we got a dog.

Now there was the new problem: Me taking the dog out in those pants. You can't not take the dog out because your pants look funny. And don't think for a second I could use the presence of the pants as an excuse to shirk. My wife would rather I be publicly embarrassed. At night I could get away with it; a long coat might help. In the dark, someone could mistake them for bad jeans, which is marginally better than bad sweats. But in the warmer months, when the sun was out so much longer, and no long coat would be worn? You march upstairs and put on something less humiliating, young man.

The sweats finally gave up the ghost after probably a decade of faithful service. The fabric gave way in what I would call the crotchetational area. No fixing that! So I cut them into rags, in the hope that they would continue to be useful, and continue to annoy my wife in some small fashion.

Of course, now every item of clothing I bring home has to face inspection. Should have seen that coming. I guess I was blinded by the Oriental Iris.