Trousers, buttons and Engineers

How many engineers does it require to sew back the button on a trouser ?

Wondering where this question came from ? Let me explain. The amazingly lazy lifestyle that I have adopted has resulted in a few expansions in my life. Now generally expansion is considered good - expansion in your salary, expansion in roles and responsibilities, expansion of your house - all are just great. The expansion that I am referring to is around my waistline. You don't have to be the brightest bulb in the room to realize that this is NOT an expansion that is desirable.

And you don't need to have a PhD in Mechanical engineering to understand the stresses and strains experienced by my trouser button, which has been fighting a valiant battle for survival against my waistline. Well, sometime last week , the unthinkable happens. I hear a pop sound around noon in office one day. Sure enough, there goes the button, severed from the umbilical cord that tied it to my trousers. Sadly I picked it up and put in my pocket.

Now the options for me were (a) To buy a new trouser (b) Sew the button back on . Being a non-IT engineer , the pay check more or less ruled out option (a) . I am not much of a tailor, but hey if the other option is to actually spend like 1500 Rs on a new pair, bring it on buddy !!

Frantic search of the home landed me with the tools for the job, the thread the needle. Several challenges popped up as soon as I start stitching. The main one being the apparently simple process of pushing the needle from one side and getting it through the hole of the button on other side. I just could not get them aligned. On the rare occasions in which I did manage to thread it though, I also managed to maintain a 100% hit rate on my finger !! By the time I finished stitching, my fingers had neat rows of perforation marks. I will omit the bloodbath details in interest of the family audience :-) All the bloodshed paid off in the end though, got my button back on and the trouser is ready to go !! It is stuck at a slightly odd angle, but hey , who cares as long as it does the job ..

Pradeep the tailor though may not have too much of a future, I doubt very much if I am gonna make Versace turn over in his grave. Unlike Pradeep the cook, who will definitely give Gordon Ramsay a run for his money :-)