Of Rubber Gloves and Zippers

                                  By Dave Hamby

              Have you ever had “one of those days” when you feel like you’d be a lot better off if you just never got out of bed?  I experienced one last week.  

             It all began when I decided to do a little house cleaning.  You see, my wife had been out of town on business and was expected back that night.  With two teenagers, two dogs and a cat, the house was a mess.

            I’m German and I like to clean things really clean.  Because I use a lot of “Lime-Away” and “409” I have to use rubber gloves to protect my hands.  I don’t like the yellow gloves they sell at the grocery store, they’re too small and I can’t feel a thing because they’re so thick.  I like the thin rubber gloves, the nitrel ones like the doctors use.  They protect my hands and I can easily pick up a dime.

              I’d just finished scrubbing the bathroom with my rubber gloves on when I got the urge to use the toilet.  When I unzipped my pants the fingertip of one of my gloves got caught in my zipper and jammed it big-time.  I fiddled with it for what seemed like a long time with no success.  The problem was compounded by the fact that I’m gravitationally challenged.  That is to say, I’m fat.  When I look down at my zipper the only thing I can see is the top of my belly.  It became obvious I needed to take off my gloves in order to get the zipper unstuck.

                Wouldn’t you know it, that’s when the door bell rang. I was expecting this roofing contractor I’d been trying to get for the past week to come look at our damaged roof. I hurried out of the bathroom with my fly open and a little rubber hand at the bottom.  The forefinger was pointing to my, well, you know what it was pointing to.

              Sure enough, I could see through a side window that it was the contractor. I cracked open the door and told him that the roof was on top of the house and that he could help himself to a look. He replied that he needed me to come outside and show him the problem. I asked him to hold on for a second or two. I couldn’t very well go outside with my half zipped zipper with a rubber glove attached.  What would he think?  

             I shut the door on him and frantically tried to come up with a solution.  I decided that I could put on one of my wife’s aprons.  I was searching the kitchen for one when I remembered that I do all of the cooking and I don’t use aprons. I have a carpenter’s apron in my garage, but that would require me having to walk across my yard with a rubber glove dangling from my zipper.   

             The only option I had was to change my pants.  Do you have any idea how hard it is for a fat guy to get out of a pair of pants that has the zipper jammed?   The fact that I was in a hurry and I had on an old pair of Levis that were already a little too tight only made things worse.  I tugged and I pulled, I huffed and I puffed and after a good two or three minutes I was finally able to get those darn pants off.

             By the time I got dressed and went outside I discovered the contractor had given up on me and left.

              When my wife got home and asked about the roof I told her of my embarrassing story.  She asked me why I didn’t just take a pair of scissors and cut off the offending glove.  After all, she pointed out, I often walk around with my fly at half mast.  

             I didn’t have an answer.  The best I could do was complain that I was just having “one of those days.”

(This piece is half of a longer column that was printed in the Round Rock Leader.   That column was the submission that won me a 2 nd place in humor columns in the South Texas Press Association’s 2003 Better Newspaper Contest.   This is available for your publication)