The Number Field

For my entire adult life, my pants have not had a main point of failure--they just wear out slowly until Jenny forbids me from wearing them. In the past several months, I've lost two or three pairs of pants to threadbare, ripped knees. At least one pair was only about a year old, and seemed otherwise to be in good condition.

There must be something going on, but there are a couple of distinct factors, and I'm not sure whether one thing is the primary culprit, or if both are significant contributors. The factors' names, of course, are Elena and Roman. In her fourth year, Elena is more active than ever, and although she's never heard of Hop On Pop , she figured out on her own how fun it is to crawl all over me. I spend a lot of bent-knee and on-the-ground time playing with her. Now that he's moving around, Roman also causes me to bend, kneel, and crawl a lot, possibly enough to induce pant knee failure.

When I was a boy, I blew out the knees on many pairs of pants. Back then, my mother would iron in a patch and I could keep wearing them. Sadly, I don't think that would be acceptable now with my workplace attire. Maybe I should start preemptively putting patches in to reinforce the knees. At least the ripped knees help me feel young again.