These words of wisdom are courtesy of my grandfather Folke (for anyone who likes to read things out loud, it’s pronounced FOHL-kee), who built houses for many, many years. And sure, they say you’re supposed to measure twice and cut once. But sometimes it doesn’t matter whether you measure once, twice, seventeen times… sometimes after you cut, it just ain’t gonna fit, so you have to make it fit. That’s why he had a hammer that may have looked like a regular hammer, but if you could find a way to roll it straight, it could have doubled pretty well as a bowling ball.
And the words of wisdom came into my head earlier tonight because we were sitting in the loveseat watching TV when I realized I was having a seizure and wanted to get the little magnet off my belt loop to swipe over my head. Unfortunately, “we were sitting in the loveseat” entailed Teresa and me sitting next to each other with one dog by our feet and the other sleeping in my lap. I’m fully aware that he’s only about 10 pounds, but when those 10 pounds are strategically placed on top of the location you’re trying to reach and he has no intent on sitting up to make your life easier, you have to figure out something. I couldn’t exactly fling him to the side (if I did, that’d be just asking for a close encounter with the wrath of the dog mama sitting next to me…), so I tried to wriggle my hand underneath him to get to the carabiner hooked onto my belt loop.
For some reason, I couldn’t get the carabiner detached. I’m not sure if it wasn’t opening under the dog’s weight or if something on the belt loop was getting snagged, but it didn’t matter how much I tried to open the carabiner and remove it, that thing wasn’t going anywhere.
So I thought about Grandpa Folke and his policy about construction, then decided to apply that rule to my belt loop. I yanked it, heard the thread snap, then swiped the magnet over my head.
Honestly, I think that’s the first time I’ve intentionally damaged a pair of jeans before. I mean, when I was a teenager, if the legs were just a little too long, I’d end up just stepping on the back of the hem with my heels and it’d eventually start to fall apart, at which point I’d start tearing off the loose threads and it’d slowly form a divot in the back until I wasn’t stepping on them anymore. But they usually seem pretty much invincible. Wear them for a few weeks or until I spill something on them, wash them, repeat as necessary. Which meant I was shocked when I was getting ready to wash a pair of jeans and found that the seam going between my legs had torn wide open. Wide enough that I could fit my hand through the hole. So it was probably good that I wasn’t going out in public and practicing judo moves that I haven’t done in about 40 years.
Does this mean it’s just a matter of time before the thread holding the belt loop onto my jeans comes unraveled and starts flapping around in the wind if I don’t start tucking it under my belt? Maybe. But sometimes, extreme circumstances arise, you have to throw caution to the wind, and then you start snapping threads like a total badass. One thing I can promise you: this magnet isn’t heavy enough to knock down bowling pins. Plus if I tried rolling it down the alley, there’s a lot of metal stuff at the far end to attach to and I’d never see it again.