So last weekend was my work holiday party, and I realized that I’ve lost too much weight and none of my nice pants fit me.

The pants that I wanted to wear were from Gap, and there is a Gap just a few blocks from my work, so I thought, “No problem! I’ll just get the same pants, except smaller. Easy peasy!” Except when I got in there, it turns out they don’t have the same pants anymore.

I suddenly realized, I don’t have a backup plan, and I am out of my element.

I started furiously texting Sara things like “help”, “emergency”, and “I need pants”. I looked around the store but, I don’t know! Everything is too casual, and nothing goes with the shirt I was planning to wear. “Why didn’t you just buy a new shirt too?” asked Sara later, but come on! Now I have TWO problems to deal with??

So I didn’t do that, instead, I ran out of the store into the street in a blind panic. This is a shopping mecca…surely there must be somewhere that sells pants!

Across the street was a Nordstrom. “Nordstrom is a department store,” I says to myself. “Department stores have pants.”

I went in, laser focused. Found some pants. This was good. I could do this. I looked at the price tag…$200!!!

At this point it was like the camera panned back and I looked around me and there was like a woman wearing a fur cap shopping next to me and I realized, “I shouldn’t be here.”

At this point my texts to Sara are like, “Please help me”, “I don’t know what I am doing”, and “There are $200 pants”.

Nordstrom was in a mall, and a mall is a place that you buy pants, right? I started wandering into stores saying things like, “Do you sell pants here? No?” and wandering back out. I was starting to think that shopping on Michigan Avenue was not my thing.

I finally start texting things like, “I am punching out” and “I will just not wear pants to the Christmas party”.

The thing is, I don’t want to be the dumb sitcom husband who can’t buy himself pants, but I just was very overwhelmed at this point. I guess I have just lost the knack of shopping in an actual store. I am naturally a researcher and on the Internet I can look at everything at my leisure, find something I am comfortable with, and go with it, you know? Nobody in fur hats looking at me like, “Who let you in?” No surprise $200 price tags. Nobody working there who can smell my fear and mock me for my shocking lack of fashion sense.

That night (after declaring, “THE CHRISTMAS PARTY IS OFF”), I looked around online and found a pair of pants that was in stock in my size at a store nearby. The next day I went in, tried them on, and bought them, proving that I am still an adult who is capable of social interaction and buying himself pants.

And now we can all just forget this ever happened…