They're forlorn, these pants. Clinically depressed. A formless, faded shadow of their once deep-hued and well-constructed selves.

At night when I go to bed, they hang listlessly on the hook on the back of the master-bathroom door, all but whimpering. "Please," I think I hear them plead. "Cut me into rags - anything to help me be something more than what I've become."

But I can't. I love them. They fit me. They're as comfortable as pajamas.

Old pants, I've decided, are the new old sneakers.

Or, as the Bard also (kind of) said: Comfort, thy name is pants.

BUT APPRECIATING the comfort that pants bring to our everyday lives does not absolve us of our responsibility to treat our pants with some respect.

That guy in my hometown of Washington, D.C., had the right idea: Lose my pants, and I'll sue your assets.

Sure, everybody thought it was crazy. But when you live in the nation's capital, you get to see craziness up close and personal.

While having dinner with friends, most of whom were wearing pants, the subject of the lawsuit came up. All of us were choking with laughter, spitting food, the usual. Suddenly, a friend named Margaret piped up.

"I think he had a point," she said defiantly.

The table fell quiet as we determined whether she was joking.

"I mean, come on," she said. "Dry cleaners? Give me a break. They lose stuff all the time, and there is no accountability."

Accountability for dry cleaners? I considered the notion as I swallowed my chicken parm.

"They break buttons, ruin shirts, lose clothes," she continued. "And what do they do to make it right? Nothing. They say it wasn't their fault."

A great nodding of heads and repeating of "yeah" went up.