Shorts shopping

Buying shorts, sounds boring. Even I, who know the minimally-entertaining story I'm about to divulge, think it's boring. Boring, boring, boring.

Not like it'll get you out of reading my story or anything, though.

So I'm out shopping for clothes. I hadn't done so in a fairly long time (I was wearing a shirt I've had for 9+ years), so I had to rediscover the fine art of purchasing shorts. To start the experience off right, I got lost. I don't easily get turned around, but within three minutes of entering some random floor of some unknown department store, I was completely and hopelessly lost. It was one of those floorplans where the floor is broken up into several hundred islands of clothes displays, broken up by pathways. All the islands look the same, and they all contain every type of clothes, including shorts. So I have to visit each island, looking at shorts, and it's only after I'm on the fifth island that I realize I have no idea where I started. I figure I'd better start picking up shorts to try on, instead of trying to remember where the potentially good ones were. After about half an hour of walking around, I notice that an island that I just looked through (finding no shorts) can, upon leaving, turning around, and coming directly back to, have numerous pairs of shorts that weren't there moments ago. This kind of shorts-centric space-time continuum rift can be pretty annoying, let me tell you. Anyway, after another half-hour or so of non-deterministic meandering, I stumbled upon a fitting room, and tried some shorts on. Here's where I discovered a new criteria in selecting shorts. It used to be: how much do they cost? do they fit? - -> purchase. Now, the shorts-makers have gone out of their way to introduce a new variable: how long does it take to open/close the pockets? With my current shorts, there's a button on each (cargo) pocket. To open the pocket, you undo the button. Easy. With some of these shorts, the pockets had two buttons. Hidden by flaps. On the inside of the pocket flap. That went into the pocket. Hard to describe, but possibly the stupidest pocket design ever. Obviously, no kangaroos were consulted during the design phase. To sum up, here are the stats on the shorts I chose, and the shorts I rejected... Good shorts: time to open both pockets: 4 seconds, time to close both pockets: 6 seconds. Bad shorts: time to open both pockets: 28 seconds, time to close both pockets: 32 seconds. That's right, a full minute, fumbling away with multiple inside-out, upside-down, tucked away buttons. You just lost yourselves a customer, stupid shorts-makers.

Yep, even after I read that... boring. I have to have some more interesting adventures.