Hey, who shrunk my pants?

They fit fine last fall and now I’m squeezing into them like someone trying to put sausage back into its casing. I know one of you shrunk my pants. I know one of you did it! Just come clean.

God knows when you got access to my closet but I can hazard a few guesses. Maybe you snuck behind me as I was microwaving a bowl full of chocolate morsels for a snack and dashed down the basement to run my pants in the wash repeatedly on the hottest setting. Maybe while I was at the movies, drizzling extra “butter” on my popcorn, you performed your alchemy on my laundry, magically shrinking the waistband. Maybe you just replaced the pants with a smaller size while I was scarfing down an order of Buffalo wings with extra blue cheese and French fries while parked in front of Netflix.

The evidence is elusive but I know something happened. I checked the pants and while the waist measurement is the same as it’s been for years, these are clearly not my pants. My pants were the ones that always fit fine before Christmas. The only possibility is laundry shenanigans or maybe you bought a pair in a larger size and switched the measurements before putting the pants in my closet.

Oh, you’re clever. I’ll give you that.

Now I’m walking around afraid to bend over and split my pants. I have to inhale like a Downton Abbey character putting on a corset just to slide into the suspiciously smaller size. And I bet you’re loving this, aren’t you? You’re somewhere with binoculars, watching me try to move gingerly in my snug slacks, just laughing and laughing. I bet you thought I’d never catch on but I did.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to lumber on over to a tailor who can hopefully reverse this nefarious pants shrinking process.