Caffeine the fourth

I drank an Americano (non-iced) from Starbucks this morning, figuring that despite the continuing heat, a cold tea-based beverage wasn't going to cut it. The resulting trip to the key-coded men's room got me thinking about my button fly. Because the pants I'm wearing today have one. A button fly is kind of like an old-fashioned radiator in an apartment you're looking at -- if you decide you like the pants/apartment, you find the button fly/radiator cool and interesting instead of stupid and old-fashioned and annoying.

Button flies are also like chopsticks because they continue to survive amid the presence of more advanced technology like the zipper. I don't use chopsticks for the most part, because when I eat my kung pao tofu I'm enjoying it way too much to mess with a couple of blunt wooden sticks in an effort to get the food to my mouth. The button fly, I can deal with. It has its advantages. If a shift in your sitting position happens to cause the flap down there to lift up, the only view to onlookers is that of a fashionable and color-matched series of buttons, instead of an ugly bunch of metal teeth. And since a zipper takes about a half-second to secure, it's a lot easier to forget to do it than it is to forget an arudous 15-to-30 second endeavor like buttoning.

(On the other hand, if you actually do neglect to button, you're royally fucked. You can forget about the little "pretend I dropped something behind me and use that brief diversion to take care of my fly situation" trick. There's really nothing to do at that point but pray for a time machine to whisk you back to that strange period in the 80's when open flies were hip.)