Johannesburg - Last Sunday was supposed to be chilled, without the usual routine of dropping my family off for the church service or nursing body aches from the night before.
All I had to do was to return a damaged item I had bought at Cresta Mall.
The trip from my house to the mall and back should have taken me about 40 minutes. It took the cashier 10 minutes to refund me before I went to shop for the same item at another shop.
As I was walking out of the shop I tried to retrieve my cellphone and parking ticket which were in my new track pants’ pocket. I tried to unzip the pocket several times as I was getting closer to the machine to pay for parking.
The zip would not open. It was tight. My thumb and index finger had started to hurt and I could feel the curious eyes watching this old man having a wardrobe malfunction.
Without paying I went straight to my car hoping to solve this puzzle in private.
It took me another 30 minutes to eventually find the courage to ask a car guard to help me.
Now we were standing outside my car with him kneeling near my crotch trying to pull down the zip using my car keys as I was pulling up my pants to avoid further embarrassment of it falling to my knees. A rather awkward sight!
Finally, we decided to break the damn thing. Since then I’ve been driving around with that shattered zip, using it as a reminder that pants with pocket zips should only be worn by children.