He Shoots! He Scores!

The local news came to visit us today. They are working with a national news service on a story that has less to do with my world-famous writing talents and more to do with the fact that my boys are really, really tough on their pants.

A few days ago I got a call from a news editor working on a piece about special deals that stores have, and she came across something I wrote on my blog a while back about a great deal Sears offers, something called the Kidvantage Club. If you haven't heard of it, be on the lookout for this news piece, which will run on CBS affiliate stations across the land. I'm not sure when it will run, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to sound like a paid endorser for Sears. Which I'm not. But maybe I should be.

The Club is basically this incredible program Sears has that lets you replace pants, and, it turns out, other articles of clothing, when they become worn or stained. I never knew about any aspect of the program besides the pants, because I can only deal with one wardrobe malfunction at a time. The catch is you must replace the clothing articles in the same size. For the average human this deal might only be good in the event of your son sitting on a nail or ripping out the knee, and only then for the few weeks it will take for him to outgrow the free pants you get to replace the originals.

For me, however, it's The Deal of the Century. Because for the next few years, I am almost guaranteed to have someone either wearing a 10 Slim, or about to be. I can't lose!

The photojournalist from our local station came to get footage and ask the questions that the national editor will then work into her story. He came about an hour before the boys got home from school, which gave me time to answer his questions in an eerily quiet environment. Maybe it would have been more compelling to have the boys swinging from the chandelier in the background? That's a woman, Sears would think, who could use some free pants. No matter what.

When the boys came home from school, the newsman got lots of footage of the boys being tough on their pants, which is to say footage of just your basic Tuesday afternoon. He filmed them reading Calvin and Hobbes, them sitting on the couch talking to me, them playing with blocks and action figures on the floor in the study, and then, the footage de résistance, the four of them shooting hoops, riding scooters and kneeling (in their pants!) on the basketball court to draw with chalk.

The boys were terribly excited when I told them last week about the upcoming interview. They were looking forward to it for days and I even very nearly got a groan-free trip to the barber out of the deal (but sadly ran out of time). When they got home from school today and saw that the photojournalist was already here, Elliott turned to his friends in the car. "Well," he said, "say three Hail Mary's and let's hope for the best."

I'll admit it was a fun experience and mostly uneventful. The only real cold-sweat moment, I'd say, was when, towards the end of a very long shoot, Charlie jumped in front of the camera and declared loudly, in a Southern accent: "Gramma broke her coccyx." I'm pretty sure that footage won't make the cut.