A friend of his wife’s tells him that her mother dumped her father because of a pair of shorts. She is an extremely athletic woman who tutors organists and has never been married, which his wife attributes to bad luck. He thinks, however, that the woman’s heart had never been set on marrying anyone, despite numerous proposals and romances. 

One day, while his wife is out shopping, the woman stops by their house two hours earlier than expected and they watch Jaws. After the movie concludes, she tells them about her parents’ divorce. She says that they weren’t really shorts; instead, they were lederhosen. Her Japanese father had wanted a pair and when her mother went to visit her sister in Germany, he asked her to bring some back for him. But, her mother extended her stay in Germany and when she came back to Japan she stayed in Osaka instead of going back to their house in Tokyo. 

There had been some issues with her father seeing other women, but they were surprised when, a few months after her mother’s return, divorce papers were served. The woman didn’t hear from her mother until three years later when they ran into one another at a funeral and her mother explained what had happened. In Germany, she had ventured out to the best lederhosen shop in the city, but when she arrived at the shop they had told her they couldn’t sell to her without her husband there to be fit for the pants. So, she found a man built like her husband who didn’t speak English and dragged him into the shop. The shopkeepers explained the situation to the man and the man obliged. After thirty minutes of him trying on the pants, her mother made the decision to divorce her husband. In that time, she had stared at the man who was shaped just like her husband and felt repulsed. 

When his wife returns home from shopping, she talks to her friend, but he is still thinking of the lederhosen. When his wife leaves the room, he asks her friend if the story helped her stop hating her mother, and she says that it did. Without the lederhosen, it would have been inexcusable, but for some reason the presence of the pants in the story makes all forgiven in her eyes.