My sister-in-law Gloriosa had a terrible shock. She reaches in the closet and grabs her blue jeans and can’t get them on.
They ain’t just a little tight. She can’t even get them up over her hips.
She goes berserk, of course. Who wouldn’t? And this is Gloriosa, who happens to be gorgeous.
She gets on the phone to the doctor and asks for a prescription for one of them weight-loss medicines. After the doctor stops laughing, he says no. And he offers to refer her to a psychologist.
She calls Weight-Watchers. A good friend of hers works there and she answers the phone. She tells Gloriosa she don’t care whether her stupid pants fit, if she even approaches a Weight-Watchers meeting, she’ll have her arrested. Weight-Watchers got enough troubles without discouraging the members.
She stomps back upstairs and has another look at these pants. And there, on the label, is the answer. Size 00.
She has never worn a size 00 in her life.
Sooo — she didn’t all of a sudden get fat. What a relief. How did these pants even get into her closet?
She goes down to the kitchen and confronts her husband Proteus. Has he been sneaking some skinny lady into their bedroom?
He is shocked. Why would he do that when he has Gloriosa? he asks. She admits he has a point. And even if he did do that, why would she leave with no pants?
Gloriosa goes back upstairs and checks under the bed. She finds some Carnival beads, a empty tissue box, a lot of dust balls, and a romance novel, but no skinny lady.
She calls me up. I got no answers, but it gives me something to think about besides hurricane season starting up.
Then she signs up for exercise classes. DAILY exercise classes. Two of them at two different exercise places.
A couple days later, I get a call from Proteus. He says Gloriosa is off at exercise class and he and their son Rex, who is 12, need a quick favor. Can I come over? I say OK. I got to return her Fourth of July wig anyways.
I got an idea this got something to do with The Mystery of the Tiny Pants.
When I get there, them two are sitting in the kitchen with two pairs of pants and a needle and thread. Proteus says he ain’t so good at sewing, but he got to take a label off one pair of pants and put it on the other — before Gloriosa exercises herself to death.
The label in the tiny pants shows it was bought at Henrietta’s, so he went over there and managed to find the same pants in Gloriosa’s size. He wants me to cut off the label and sew the 00 on it.
I got it done in five minutes, and he rushes upstairs and hangs these pants in their bedroom.
Rex is sitting there with the other pants. “You going to tell me you been wearing these?” I ask him. “Noooo. They belong to my friend Toothpick. Across the street.”
Well, it turns out Toothpick is a girl, a skinny girl — whose real name is Toni. Her mother made her wear blue jeans to a sleepover, and Toothpick wanted to wear shorts like everybody else. So she wore both, and slipped the jeans off and gave them to Proteus. But when she got back next morning to get them, Proteus was still asleep, so she had to sneak home to her bedroom without her mother seeing her.
So that’s the story of The Tiny Pants.
Proteus rolls Toothpick’s pants into his backpack, and strolls across the street. She answers the door, snatches the backpack, runs upstairs and comes back with a teddy bear in it. “Thanks, sweetie,” she says, kisses him on the cheek, and shuts the door.
He is still standing there in shock when his mother pulls up across the street.
She rushes upstairs right away, like she does after every exercise class, to try on the jeans. But this time she comes down wearing them.
“Exercise works!” she yells, dancing around.
Yeh, with a little help from her friends.
