Zip It

Last night I was gathering up our laundry with the intention of "takin' it out back and beatin' it 'ginst a rock 'n some soapy water to warsh it," as is our way here in good old Indiana. As I normally do, I was in the process of zipping all the zippers and buttoning all the buttons when I managed to disassemble the zipper on one of Erin's favorite skirts.

I made a desperate attempt at emergency zipper repair, and I thought I'd succeeded. But when I handed the article over to my gentle, loving wife, she immediately tore the zipper asunder.

Logically, I suggested that perhaps she could still wear the skirt via the use of some cleverly placed safety pins or buttons, but she found this suggestion to be nonsensical. I was surprised by this reaction.

You see, Erin has a coat -- a winter coat, no less -- that does not have a usable zipper. Long ago, the zipper was yanked from its tracks, but she still wears this coat in all manner of frigid, Indiana winter conditions. I often suggest that she purchase another winter coat, one featuring a working zipper even, but she simply tells me that there's no reason to do so. She is perfectly content to dart from car to building and back, coat blowing in the breeze, rather than purchasing a new coat and staying healthy and warm from November to March.

Similarly, soon after we were married, she wore a pair of overalls from which the shoulder straps had been excised. In fact, her overalls were really nothing more than a pair of denim shorts without a waistband. They were shameful, but didn't bother Erin in the slightest. She wore them until they suffered some sort of accidental death while being sorted for the laundry one evening.

So it makes no sense to me why I should be expected to throw out a perfectly good skirt, just because of the absence of some semi-necessary closure hardware. Surely there's "some rope 'er somethin' we can use to tie it to 'er waist."