I got a text message:
"Have you ever explained, on your blog, why are you 'the pants?'"
And I said:
"No. No one has asked." (and some people know anyways)
To which she replied (with a very concerned):
"hmmm"
So, gather 'round children, and ye shall hear the tale of how I became The Pants.
It was my 18th birthday. My brother's girlfriend (at the time) needed to do a photo shoot or some something or other for a photography class. (This is the girlfriend that introduced me to all kinds of cool music and also dance moves like the Muppet dance or the Barbie dance. They're lots of fun. I will do a demonstration if you ask. Politely. Maybe not the Barbie dance. I don't like it as much.) Since it was my birthday (And I had been shot down by the only person I wanted to go to winter formal with, although, Michael -not the one I married- legitimately had a basketball game the same night, which by the way is the excuse he used when he didn't want to go out with a girl, but it was for real this time. SERIOUSLY. Look, his family was like my second family. I don't have to explain my high school loserness to you. Moving on.) Amber said 'Hey let's go to all the seedy places "downtown" (I use the term downtown loosely, because have you ever been to Tyler, Tx?) and do a fun photo shoot!' And I said 'Okay!'
And they were the most depressing pictures ever invented.
I had it in my head that, when modeling, you don't smile. Happy birthday Sandi, hope you don't cut your wrists. That's basically what the pictures were saying. Regardless of how depressing they looked, Amber still had to make note of lighting and angles and blah blah blah, so she kept notes as we went along and, as she titled her notes page, she said "Photo shoot of Sandi.... PANTS!"
And it came to pass, from thenceforth, it stuck. (It just has a nice ring to it, right?)
I am, however, not the original Pants in my family. I hear tell that my oldest brother was known as Jeffy Pants long before I was ever Sandi Pants. Holly tried to be Holly Pants for awhile but really it didn't work at all and she's more of a Pops anyways. Unless she's being a Poopy Pants and Darius is singing a song about it, in which case Pants does apply to her. (It's a really good song, real jazzy feeling, that involves snapping your fingers, kind of like at a poetry reading. By the way, being a poopy pants has nothing to do with bowel movements. It's more of a way of saying 'you should stop arguing with us about what movie we want to watch and do what we say and stop being a poopy pants.' In case anyone was wondering. My little sister does not have Crone's disease.)
Anyways, lots of people proceeded to call me Sandi Pants after that. Except Darius, my other older brother but not oldest, who simply called me Pants. I say that in the past tense, but in reality, if I died before him, and he did the eulogy at my funeral, he would probably only use the name Pants, because that's all he ever calls me. ('We lost some good Pants today...' Wouldn't that be so funny?? I guess not at a funeral... MY funeral...)
Moving on some more, the title of this here blog, "Mrs. The Pants" also comes from Amber. She would call me that on certain occasions. Also, there was this guy named Matt that we were friends with (one time, Chelsea and I decorated his car for Valentine's day and we were excited about the joke we had played on him, only we didn't know he'd laid down a bunch of money that very day to have it detailed since he had an actual Valentine's date that night... So, we washed his car while Darius and Johnny laughed at us... GOOD TIMES!) and sometimes Darius and Amber called him Matty Pants and sometimes, if Matt and I were in the same room, Amber would greet us as "Mr. and Mrs. The Pants." That's just how she rolled.
All of this writing of nicknames and siblings and what not makes me wonder why Angie never had a nickname? Did she have one and I was just unaware? By the time I entered the world, Angie had already lived a good 5 years. For all I know, in that amount of time, she had run for congress and was known as 'The Vigilant Oak' because she was very consistent in being mean during debates.
Does my big sister have a nickname? It's truly one of those great mysteries of life. I guess we'll never know....
On a completely different note, the clouds are unreal today. It's fantastic.
Can I just throw in one last thought? One time, actually one of the MANY times my mom fed the young single adults that lived in Tyler and were far from home so they needed a good Sunday dinner, we were all playing Mad Libs (FUN!) and when it got to Jamon, Darius asked for a noun and Jamon said very seriously "A dying horse."
It was magic.