Hot Pants

A family member was kind enough to give Hadley the Barbarian these ski pants at Christmas. And they'll come in handy in a couple of days. Nice, right?







Only problem: the kid's going to be tripping security sensors right and left. And I'm not saying that someone has sticky fingers but...





...did these pants fall off the back of a truck or what? Ouch, they're burning my hands, they're so hot!






So yesterday, I brought them with me while shopping at a ski store. I first picked out some gear because a) I actually needed to buy stuff and b) to convince the sales lady that I'm legit. Of course I tripped the alarm when I arrived, so the sales staff was tailing me from the get go.

Anyway, I deposited my clothes at the register, whipped out yee-ole credit card, and then off-handedly mentioned, "Oopsie daisy, someone gave my kid these pants but they forgot to take off the security tag. Can you just pop this off?"

"It's from another store," I added. (translation: even if I did steal it, at least I didn't rip off your store.)

"Well, I know that," sales lady says with a touch of scorn. "Our tags are different and I can tell you right now, our machine can't take this off."

I made her try anyway, but finally she said, "Why don't you take it back to the store you stole it from and they can remove it?"

Okay, so she didn't say exactly that, but the look of face said: you, are shady acres.

And at that very moment a security guy strolled through the door and leaned up against the counter. But apparently it was just the rent-a-cop making his rounds.

So my next stop was a guaranteed bastion for bad behavior, a place saturated with ways to buck the system. The internet, of course. I picked up a ton of tips on do-it-yourself security tag removal.

Pry it up with scissors, then use plyers to gently rotate the round end. Wrap a bunch of rubber bands around the metal post to widen the gap until it pops free. Use a flat head screw driver to pry the thing apart, but only if it doesn't contain ink (Ink? who knew?).

But then a little farther down: put the garment in the freezer for a couple of hours to solidify the ink, then crack it open.

One enterprising individual actually sells a curved pin that disengages the device like the stores do.

But in the end, I didn't need internet tips. The farrier came by today! And anyone who pulls horse shoes can figure out how to pop one of these babies off.

Bending a horse shoe nail into a make-shift skeleton key didn't work. But five minutes later, ta da! Yet another use for a good pair of nippers...