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What is That Sound?

I can't remember where I saw it, but there was a funny graph about the relative importance of socks and sweatpants in 2020. It looked sort of like this:

With credit to https://accidentalfire.com/2020/04/03/relative-importance-2020/

The general gist of the graph is that as people have quarantined, the need for comfortable, "at home" clothing has gone up, and other things have become less important. I definitely chuckled when I saw this.

In that vein, I recently got myself a new pair of shorts. Much like the sweatpants line in the graph above, my desire for comfortable clothing during the summer heat has gone up quite a bit. I actually don't own tons of pairs of shorts for everyday wear, so it was nice to pick up a new pair.

Now, we ordered the shorts online, much like every other purchase we've made in recent times. That meant that I didn't get a chance to try them on first, or to see how they fit. I wasn't particularly worried about this because men's clothing doesn't tend to have too many moving parts to it, but I still had it in the back of my mind that I should make sure they fit okay when I received them.

So, when they arrived, I made sure to try them on. I was relieved that they fit fine. I even took a walk around the house to make sure that there wasn't any weirdness with the shorts in motion. When the shorts passed that hurdle as well, I knew I was going to keep them. I threw them in the wash, and promptly forgot about any fit or clothing issues.

A week later or so, it was fairly hot, so I decided to break out my new shorts. I forget what I was doing, but I definitely appreciated being able to walk around the house in comfort.

A short while later, I thought I heard a clinking sound coming from the kitchen. That's not a sound that I'm used to hearing in the house, so I went to investigate. Most of our appliances are in the kitchen, but I didn't see anything that was on or hear any movement from any of the appliances. Oddly enough, the sound was intermittent, so that made even less sense to me. I checked the other appliances in the house, but I couldn't pinpoint the source of the sound. I'm not going to lie, a small part of my brain started worrying that there might be bugs or some sort of living organism that was generating that sound. 

Still, I couldn't pinpoint the sound, so I sort of left it alone. I figured I'd sort of listen for it again, and if I heard it, I'd rush to the source as quickly as I could.

A little while after that, I happened to need to use the restroom, so I took care of my business. However, it was during that process that I had to tie the drawstrings together for my shorts, and I realized that the tips of the drawstrings were not made of the usual plastic material. No, these were a little sturdier. Specifically, they were made of metal.

The realization dawned on me, and I laughed at myself. All this time I had been worried about something going wrong with our kitchen appliances, but the source of the sound had been the metal tips on the end of my shorts' drawstrings clinking against each other. That's also why the sound had been intermittent, because the drawstrings hadn't been clinking against each other every single time I took a step. My shorts only made that sound when things happened to align just right. I also hadn't thought to check my person for that sound, so my brain immediately ruled out the one true source of the metallic clinks.

After I finished laughing at myself, I resolved to remember that these shorts had a built-in warning system. Otherwise, I'd end up troubleshooting a dryer or something the next time I wore them.

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