The Origin of Pants

Here's a niggling stylistic issue that's been bugging me about the blog: I have no satisfactory anonymous nickname for my husband. I've simply been calling him "my husband," which makes me cringe every time I write it because it sounds so pompous, so left-ringfinger-waving, so very I-define-myself-by-my-marital-status.

It also reduces him to this thing that I own, some really complex appliance that I steer around and maintain. Nothing could be further from the truth-- I have no control over him, and I hardly ever officially feed him.

So I'm in the market for a moniker. First, I should clarify that I believe the use of anonymous nicknames is just good form. If, God forbid, either of my parents were to start a blog and mention any of the embarrassing episodes I routinely dump on them, (and that I haven't already converted into blog-fodder) I would hope they'd have the good grace to call me something mercifully oblique. Like Firstborn, or Debt Source Number 1.

Lots of the blogs I read have solved this problem by referring to their spouses by their first initial, which is adorably quaint. It reminds me of flowery 18th century British prose, especially travelogues. "F. had a most successful morning subduing and baptizing a small flock of native children, after which we retired to my tent for tea." The problem is, I have this weird compulsive need to fill in the blanks, and I find myself fretting over various F names-- Francine? Falstaff? Fisty?-- instead of paying attention to the plot.

I'm also fundamentally against familial nicknames, specifically "hubby." I tried really hard, but I can't ever hear "hubby" as affectionate. It sounds either smartassy or sarcastic, and reminds me of the Perpetually Bumbling Husband who stars in every household cleaning agent commercial and seems barely capable of keeping himself from drowning in a toilet bowl, much less cleaning one.

I could use one of the various bizarre nicknames we've assigned to each other over the years, but most of those are either downright weird or involve a long and overly-intimate back story. Since I'm running out of options though, that's exactly what I'm going to do:

"My husband" will henceforth be "Pants."

Long and overly-intimate back story:

When we were first married and living in Florida, Pants and I were broke. Broke ass broke. Indeed, we had just had a wedding and received lots of gifts, both utensil-ary and monetary, but both of us separately have always been No Fun when it comes to money, and so together we became Twice As No Fun. We opened IRA's (long, blatting trombone note here).

All of our friends in Florida were young, single military guys very much in the "Shots! Who wants shots? Woo!" stage, and since I was still trying to find a job, we could only really afford to hang out once a month. Even then the night was laden with economic pressure-- I'm convinced no one drinks jaigermeister unless they are a) a rapist with a young date or b) broke and trying to keep up.

One of the cheap ways we found to entertain ourselves was to check out free DVD's from the local library (which was pitiful by the way-- nothing but Jesus books and cookbooks) and sit around eating popcorn and farting. Pants is unbeatable at this sport, and has risen to the level of fartiste, meaning he employs a great deal of finesse and muscular control to give voice to the song in his bowels. For me though, a devoted word nerd, the true nature of his talent is when he then crafts metaphors to describe the tone and timbre of each utterance.

"That sounded like someone ripping burlap underwater."

"That sounded like a stack of dusty dictionaries being dropped in an empty hallway."

"That sounded like the muffled cry of a very old, very sad monkey."

To honor this wit and skill, I gave him the name ThunderPants, which was then shortened to Pants. For reasons unknown, he has returned the favor by calling me Tooth.