A Good Pair of Drawers Is Hard to Find

WC 814

Sometimes a Good Pair of Drawers Is Hard to find

By Jack Rawlins

My name is Professor Chico Teako. I teach co-ed exercise classes. I want to tell you about the time I split my pants and why I wasn’t wearing my $45 dollar Capoeiras with the ‘reinforced crotch piece for maximum comfort and durability’ when it happened.

Ten years ago on a trip to South America, I attended a Capoeira (pronounced kap-oo-air-uh) festival and became addicted to the sport. Capoeira is a stylized martial-art dance from Brazil .It’s characterized by acrobatic fighting maneuvers and athletic dance steps that can make a break-dancer envious. When you watch it, you can understand the need for a set of tough drawers. Without my Capoeira pants, I was an accident about to happen.

I come from a long line of pants splitters. Gran Da Farcus Teako was famous for habitually popping his seams in public. Regardless of how much weight he gained, he always tried to stick with the same size pants. He liked the sleek fit to which he was not physically entitled. He moved his belt lower and lower to compensate as his pot grew. But he could not make adjustments for his big backside.

Gran Ma would say, “The old fool popped his britches again; he just can’t accept the fact that they don’t make thread strong enough to support such a powerful ego.”

My dad, too, was a splitter. He liked to hunker down and play with my brother and me, but his pants didn’t. Often when he would squat, his pants would not.

So as one who has witnessed and been party to many a split, I’m immune to the embarrassment felt by anyone who splits when he’s not going anywhere. It’s an accident that gives new meaning to the cliché’ “I’m outta here.

I had a lot of experience before the Capoeira split that I want to tell you about.

In eighth grade I tore the seat out of my pants climbing over a chain link fence to retrieve a football. Technically it was not a split but the exposure was pronounced. Miss Sherrie, the playground proctor, who also taught home economics offered to baste my buns. I wasn’t sure if she was using the term for cooking or sewing. Anyway, she took me to the home economics room and deftly basted the gap tightly enough to survive my bus ride home.

While she worked she said if I was in her class she would give me A-plus for deportment.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because, “she said, “for a young man with his butt hanging out you are remarkably poised.”

My next exposure came at a track meet my freshman year in high school. I was anchor man in the one-mile relay. The runner handing me the baton made a smooth pass but stumbled, grabbed the waistband of my trunks and pulled them down to my ankles. I couldn’t just stand there, so I lurched forward, kicked them off and took off. It was an important race, so I finished the lap in my jock.

As Coach Vince Lombardi said,” Winning is not everything – but making the effort to win is.” We didn’t win the race. But I did get a nice round of applause at the finish line.

Last fall, my wife was attending a personal trainer’s seminar in the Poconos the week I started my first six-week Capoeira session. Now I’m a procrastinator and I didn’t discover until minutes before the class I couldn’t find my Capoeira pants, my jock strap, or even a clean pair of jockey shorts.

Desperation is the mother of inspiration. I grabbed a pair of my wife’s panties and squeezed into them. It was a tight fit, but actually they felt more comfortable than a jock or jockey shorts. And who was going to see them anyway? Who? I’ll tell you who. The whole damn class--that’s who.

I slipped on a pair of my regular snug old sweat pants, entered our basement studio, welcomed the class, and swung into action. Capoeira is full of high kicks and movements that tax the crotch.

I don’t know when the first little glimpse of pink showed and burst into a gapping split like the maw of a hungry animal.Not until the class erupted into hysterical laughter did I realize I had been alternately mooning and flashing thirty men and women for five minutes.

I conducted the rest of the class sitting down. When it was over, Lisa Foggiti, one of my star pupils said, “Professor Teako, you gave new meaning to the term, ‘Let it all hang out.’ We got to see a side of you we’ve never seen before.”

At the end of the six-week session, it was Lisa who presented me a present from the class: A gift certificate to Victoria’s Secret.

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