Saving Skivvies

Even though we’ve been together for a long time, my husband and I still find a lot to talk with each other about. A lot.

Sometimes our discussions are exciting.

Sometimes they’re not.

And sometimes, they lead me to my computer to talk about them with you.

Guess which conversation category one recent one falls into?

One morning, my husband says to me, “We have to wash underwear. I’m down to tighty whities.”

At first, I didn’t find this strange. I just figured that all his boxers and boxer briefs were in the laundry.

Then I realized how stupid this is. Why on earth would a grown man keep half a drawer full of underwear that he had decided, at some point with the purchase of boxers and boxer briefs, that he disliked. How crazy is that?

Um, then I realized that I do it too.

Keep underwear that I don’t love, that is. Not wear tighty whities…

I do the absolute same thing. I keep underwear that I don’t like. It’s either not comfortable or I don’t like the fabric or something else just makes me not like them.

Let’s really think about this for a minute: if we have underwear we don’t like, why don’t we just get rid of it…and do laundry more often? Or buy more that we like?

It’s not like underwear is $1,000 a pair. (Well, I’m sure some kinds are, but none of my family and friends are wearing those, I can’t tell you that for a fact. And, no, I didn’t check with them. In this case, I’m sure I know.) So why do we do this?

I decided to ask my friends. You know, just to make sure that Brad and I aren’t nuts.

The good news is that if we are nuts, so are our friends.

I asked two close friends of ours, one woman and one man, about their underwear habits.

The woman does exactly what I do—she keeps ill-fitting lingerie or underwear that is otherwise unpleasant. She keeps it in her drawer and knows that she needs to do laundry when she starts wearing them.

What in the world is wrong with us, people?

The guy laughed when I told him what my husband does. “I only wear boxer briefs,” he said. As I was telling him how smart he was because he just wears what he likes and then launders what he likes, he looked at me and said, “Um, but I do keep some tighty whities in my drawer for emergencies.”

Emergencies? Seriously? We could have underwear emergencies?

I began thinking about times in which we could need emergency underwear. The only thing that I’ve come up with is that if we had some horrible home accident and were about to get carted off in an ambulance and you suddenly realized that you had not yet taken a shower at the time of said accident and needed to wear clean underwear (You mother always told you to wear nice, clean underwear in case you get into an accident.), you could ask the EMTS  if, while losing a ton of blood, you could take a moment to put on a pair of emergency underwear.

And I can’t see any of us doing that…

If we did, we’d end up being taken to a different kind of hospital. Of that, I am sure.

Michele Wojciechowski, who is trying to throw out her “old” underwear right now, writes “Wojo’s World™” from Baltimore.