Time to break out the emergency shorts

It's getting to be that time of year where I have to break out the emergency shorts.

We're approaching the season which is the Weaver men's favorite season: Short pants weather.

When you have legs like mine, covering them with any sort of manmade fabric is criminal.

Or so I've been told.

By myself.

Sigh.

There truly isn't much better than the sensation of a cool breeze cutting across a warm day, and rifling through my leg hairs.

Growing up, it didn't take much encouragement to break out the shorts. This could occasionally prove treacherous, such as when faced with a late snowstorm.

Friends and family members alike would deride us for our foolishness, as we would huddle beneath our blankets and mutter through shivering teeth, "T-t-t-t-tot-t-t-t-ally w-w-w-worth it-t-t-t-t."

We'd try to outlast most of the other shorts wearers in the area, too, enjoying the feel of nothing past our kneecaps long after reason and logic would compel saner individuals to put on something warmer.

It beats running home after a long day and peeling oneself out of sweat-soggy pants legs, especially once one remembers something one had to do at work and must race back into the office, but not before sticking one's legs back into one's pants, which haven't dried but have instead reached a climate best described as "quite clammy."

Ick.

We were dragged kicking and screaming into the cooler days of autumn, until the inevitable day a breeze brought with it the right combination of elements to attack our immune system.

"Might be time to start wearing long pants again," we'd think in between sneezes and sniffles and lectures.

Proper business attire and a workplace dress code require me to sweat out much of the summer in long pants, but deep down, mentally, my legs are free.

Which brings us to those emergency shorts.

They're a requirement for the inevitable moment after some event where pants really are the social nicety and norm when someone in my group pitches some activity where shorts would really make a difference.

Hiking up a smoldering volcano, for instance, or traipsing through a steamy greenhouse.

It's nice to know I have a contingency plan. It's either that or cook.

I'm thinking of keeping a pair of short pants in the trunk of my car.

If I have an assignment out of town, the instant all my requirements are accomplished, I can rush into the nearest restroom and transform myself from Matthew Weaver, uberprofessional, into Matthew Weaver, cool breeze connoisseur.

After the day is done, and all the requirements have been fulfilled, I pull out a pair of shorts and really start livin'.