Pantsed By Gravity

Embarrassing Moment Prompt: Pants pulled off while hanging off monkey bars. 

There I was, a ten-year-old little scamp, balancing on the jellies of my toes as I reached upwards eagerly towards the monkey bars. My heels wiggled as I stretched the whole expanse of my little body out towards the first handhold, short stubby fingers grazing across the metal. Thinking about it now, there weren’t even that many other kids on the playground, five or six tops, I think. A few skidding down the slides, a lone straggler making a conquest up the climbing wall like he was Indiana Jones, but all in all it was just a few kids. No matter how many witnesses though, nothing could have prepared me what was about to unfold, or rather, what was about to unzip. As I had finally managed to wrap my chubby fists around the first rail of the monkey bars, my legs were soon carried off the stilted platform of the playground. Suspended in the air, dangling on the bars by my arms like a fishing weight at the end of a line, I suddenly felt something start to free itself from my body. “Fine by me” I thought, “It’s probably my pet rock falling out of my pocket, anything I can shed to help me stay on the bars is great”. Little did I know, that it wasn’t just little Rocky Balboa slipping off, but the entirety of my pants! There was what, a ka-jillion other kids at this school, and of course I’m the one with a faulty zipper on his cargo shorts. As the pants gave way, I had no choice but to stay suspended in the air on the monkey bars, terrified and completely helpless to the embarrassment of gravity’s cruelest prank. Even with the scarce amount of kids who witnessed firsthand, it was the talk of the town. By town though I of course mean fifth grade, but regardless, it sure wasn’t great being reminded of this over and over again at the ten-year class reunion. “Long time no see, Zipper”. Har har har.