Where's My Pants? (Again)

This morning while Andrew was out grocery shopping I called the kids into the living room to help me fold the laundry—their laundry, to be precise—so we could put it away. Zoë and Phoebe came right away, but Alexander was lingering in front of Zelda. He was in the middle of figuring something out and apparently wasn't able to save his game until that part had been figured out, so I gave him a few minutes to get things sorted before joining us in folding the laundry.

He ended up failing in whatever quest he was in the middle of, dying somehow, and respawning, and...so he quit and saved his game and entered the room still feeling a little dejected...a little distracted.

"Did you save your spot?" I asked. 

"Yeah," he sighed and started explaining to me all about how he failed and died and respawned and...

He pulled off his pants.

"Ummm...buddy..."

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

"What am I doing? I'm..." he looked down at his hands, which were holding his pants, which were no longer on his body. "What am I doing?! I think I thought I was getting dressed! Ahhhh! I'm not getting dressed! I'm folding laundry! I'm folding laundry! Ahhhh!"

Zoë collapsed onto the pile of laundry laughing and Alexander quickly pulled his pants back on.

I told the kids about a song by Chumbawamba that was popular back in the late 90s called Amnesia. I turned it on for them so that they could listen to it because...culture...and because Alexander had completely forgotten what he was supposed to be doing. (Apparently Andrew doesn't know Amnesia. He knows Tubthumping though!)

Phoebe went wild dancing around the room. I was mostly ignoring her, singing the chorus with Zoë while we folded clothes:

"Do you suffer from
longterm memory loss?
I can't remember..."

Phoebe interrupted with a big, "Ta-dah!"

We looked up at her and she was dancing away...absolutely...100%...buck naked!

"Phoebe!" I gasped. "What are you..."

"I'm Aleksei!" she giggled with delight. And then she said in a mocking voice, still dancing around, "I fought I was detting dessed! I fought I was detting dessed!"

(Who taught this child how to troll people?!)

I had to chase her little squealing booty all around the house and wrestle her back into her clothing, but we did eventually get the laundry put away, in case you were wondering.

*****

I thought this post should be linked somehow to our other posts about people losing their pants. So, there was that time in 2014 when nobody noticed that Miriam had neglected to have pants on when we left the house. I titled that post "Where's My Pants?" and people thought it was a reference to the LEGO Movie, but it wasn't! Our "Where's my pants?!" reference occurred nearly a decade before The LEGO Movie even came out (and we hadn't even seen The LEGO Movie when I wrote this post, though we were sure to see it as soon as possible after since we knew that line was in it). Here's the story:

One day Andrew and I were sitting around the kitchen table at "The Orem House" with Grandma and Grandpa (playing dominoes or making wedding plans or something—maybe both) and Auntie Emily entered the kitchen and demanded, "Where's my pants?!" 

We all stared up at her, blinking wordlessly.

"Emily," I finally offered, smiling serenely. "You're wearing pants." 

"Not these pants!" she said. "My other pants!"

I think they were in the laundry or something. 

At any rate, that exchange has become, as my children like to say "family lore." Emily even wrote it on a snowman ornament at our wedding (in 2005).