We, as a society, need to stop taking real-life environmental storytelling for granted. It’s famously great fun in video games, sure, but those of us who embrace it in the more analog aspects of our lives know that it’s like people-watching on steroids.
A lone thank-you card nestled in the magazine rack by a grocery store’s checkout area? Someone probably recently thought “Actually, you know what? Screw that guy.” A bundle of asparagus abandoned in the cinnamon roll section of the bakery aisle? Loyalty was tested here, even if we can’t tell if it won or lost. A half-full Wendy’s Frosty hidden in a shrubbery outside McDonald’s? Someone tried to have their proverbial cake and eat it too, and simply could not be patient about it.
But what can we possibly extrapolate from a wild pair of pants that’s joined at the hip to a scooter? TikTok’s @r_kust couldn’t tell you.
Indeed, in just seven seconds, @r_kust unleashed what just might be the next big great mystery of our time, shakily showing off this dubious pairing of denim and aluminum without a word being said. Just as well, because this is something we all must deduct for ourselves.
Perhaps the pants were just that stuck, and the owner of the scooter — presumably too far from home to drag the scooter with their ankle — had a choice to make. Or maybe this mystery person was selected as a trial customer for a prototype Scooter-Pant product of sorts and wanted to make it very clear that such an item wasn’t worth their or anyone else’s time. Further still, maybe this was the site of a scooter trick so outrageously amazing, that it literally knocked the pants off of its rider, who then allowed the ground to keep both the scooter and their pants in hopes of making the trick’s legacy endure in that space. Maybe they were just drunk or they got into an accident, who knows?
Whatever the case was, it probably wasn’t a situation that the rider intended to get into, but evidently, it’s not enough to simply not want to get into an accident. According to a 2023 report released by the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, medical emergency departments have e-scooter accidents to thank for an estimated total of 169,300 visits from 2017 to 2022. Further, roughly 11 percent of these unlucky chaps reported a distraction as a cause of the accident. Losing your pants is, I presume, a fairly overwhelming distraction.
Moral of the story? Instead of e-scootering, try walking so as to take in your surroundings at a steadier pace; much better to interpret Planet Earth’s environmental storytelling than become a part of it.