unspoken stories

I was driving my daughter to school today (she's in an advanced program, and during the course of the summer, has been invited to study at NASA), and my keen powers of observation spotted a pair of pants in the middle of the road on the other side of the divider which runs between.

I started to giggle.

My eldest daughter, in the back with her friend, asked me what I was giggling about (because she knows her mama, and it's bound to be something she might find humorous).

"Well," I said, "someone left their pants in the middle of the road.  Who in the heck would take off their pants in the middle of the street, in the middle of the night?"

A few giggles tittered from the back seat.

"Mom, how do you know that?  I mean, it could have fallen out of someone's moving stuff!"

"I reckon," I mused (because, in the south, we 'reckon' a lot), "that someone took off their pants because if it had fallen from a box, there would be other clothes, right?"

"Hmm." More giggles.

"And if it had fallen outta luggage, there would STILL be other clothes, right?  I mean, I tape up boxes, and I latch luggage when I've got them in a trailer."

"Mom!"  Two teens, still giggling in the back.

"So....somebody must have been on drugs, or really, really drunk, and thought, GEE, IT'S TOO HOT TONIGHT!  I DON'T NEED THESE STINKIN' PANTS!....I figure if those pants could talk, they've have a pretty interesting story about how they got abandoned on a busy thoroughfare."

My daughter, between giggles, "Poor, poor pants."