Staying Power Chapter One : The Drawstrings

A number of years ago my wife gave me a pair of flannel pajamas from Nordstrom. At that time in my life I slept in my underwear. I had decided somewhere along the line that sleeping in one’s underwear was some sort of statement of resistance to something that should be resisted. But the point in time at which I received that gift of Nordstrom flannel pajamas was also that point in my life when various chemicals in my body had apparently begun to atrophy causing the cold that often accompanies the sleeping hours to begin to invade the curtilage of my soul, to say nothing of my body. So pajamas seemed a suitable solution to the cold. So I started wearing them. And then I couldn’t stop. They were so warm. They were so soft. Except for the inevitably necessary bouts with the washing machine, those pajamas were never away from me when I slept. And time passed. And time, as it so passed, was not kind to my pajamas.

The first to begin to go were the draw strings. They just began to fray. They just began to break when drawn. They just seemed to be pointing to the doom of those garments which had become so indispensible to my warmth and comfort when sleeping or preparing to sleep. I tied those drawstrings back together again and again and I figured out ways to keep the irregular girth of those knot-bulked draw strings from hindering the performance of their draw string function. But they continued to deteriorate and I continued with my knotting counter measures. I was determined to continue using those pajamas.

But then the pajamas themselves began to develop rents and holes and massive fissions in the fiber.

And then one day I had to face the fact that they had turned to rags. And as rags they were consigned to the rag bag. Sad is not an adequate word. But sad is the only word at my disposal to describe the pall of gloom that descended upon my life, at least the pre/during/and-immediately post sleeping portion of my life that was affected by that ragbag consignment. Luckily for my happiness this story has a sequel.