Yesterday, Eli was treated to some new pants on sale at the Gap and J. Crew. I predict that new pants are also in Lydia and Grace’s near future. If one gets, they all want.
This morning, 20 minutes before he had to leave for work, Eli presented me with a post-retail frustration: the security tag still attached to the seam of his Gap jeans.
Why drive back to the store when you can remove these tags yourself? I’ve done it before. I got a flat head screwdriver, hammer, and hacksaw from the toolbox, although in the end I only needed the screwdriver and saw and a few minutes.
It is just so typically me to come up with a moderately hard way to do something and only later find the simpler way. Go here and here to see how to do this in seconds with two sets of pliers. The second video even shows the mechanism inside these hard tags and why the two-pliers method works.
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Credit for images 4, 5, 6, and 7 goes to Eli Guterman.
leaf stitch word 
John Waters says we should wear the security tags like a badge of honor.
I like to wear my Gap stickers — that long ribbon of Ms on clear tape that runs down the front of t-shirts I buy — for as long as possible, as a badge of medium.