Early in the morning at work I shift my weight a little, waiting for the next customer to come walking in the door. And as I do so, “POP!” My belt buckle falls right off of my belt. It is one of those reversible ones where you can twist the buckle to make it into a brown belt, and vice versa. And it just snaps right off. I did almost nothing to promote this either. I just stood there, looking down at my belt, baffled. After several minutes of fruitlessly pushing the two pieces together, hoping that suddenly they will magically decide they like each other again and stick, I have to give up.

I go back to the sales floor, sans belt. And let me tell you, I was not happy about that. Something really weird happened inside of me. I got extremely upset about the fact that I wasn’t wearing a belt. I mean, really upset. Emotionally distraught, you could say. It couldn’t have been worse if I somehow managed to make it into work with no pants on. I felt naked, both figuratively and literally. And I felt like a loser idiot who doesn’t know that you wear a belt with dress pants. I was seriously having trouble functioning at all at work.

So I went across the street and bought a $20 belt from Bass. And even despite the fact that I just dropped $20 unexpectedly on a belt in the middle of the day, just putting it on made me feel a million times better. I was a new man. I was able to do my job again. What a weird feeling. It’s silly, but I think I was about to have a panic attack over a silly belt. I’ve had this feeling before. I once went to the bank in jeans, but forgot to put my belt on before I left the house. I almost considered going back, even though no one would probably even see me.

I guess you could say that my mom did a really good job teaching me how to dress myself.