Yes, I am aware that is more information about me than any sane person could possibly want.
I share it only to illustrate a mathematical principle, of sorts.
I can always use more t-shirts.
I can always use more pants.
I am always running short of socks.
However, I have more than enough underwear.
For a long time my underwear accumulation rate exceeded my rate of obsolescence, and therefore I am always nowhere near having an empty drawer at the point when the available pairs are replenished.
I have enough to get through almost a month without a laundry.
This is not a bad thing when laundry is weekly.
But it leads to a surreal resource management issue.
I am in particular thinking of a certain plastic-wrapped package of five boxer briefs that the wife bought me more than a year ago. They sit in my underwear drawer, like a survival kit that has never needed its seal broken.
Every once in a while the wife looks at them with annoyance and says, “You haven’t opened that package yet.” I say, why should I? The need is not urgent.
So there’s a certain simmering dramatic tension between the impulse to acknowledge that my wife did a considerate thing by buying me underwear and the practical reality that I have never been desperate enough to break the seal on that bag. I am always at least {the contents of that bag plus one} away from having to open that bag.
And yet the annoyance level remains. The most unsullied underwear in the house is not living up to its share of the responsibility.
The bag rebukes me.
It was only yesterday that Judi twigged to the answer: hey. Next time I have to pack to go on a trip, I toss that bag in the suitcase.
That way, I don’t have to worry about folding them, or fitting them in; I have a single self-contained object that functions as special equipment.
At which point it will be time to buy a new sealed bag to sit in that drawer and rebuke me.
We greeted this epiphany with far more excitement than it was worth. At last! The sealed bag of underwear has a purpose! Calloo, Callay!
But then the replacement bag becomes the irritant.
This is a first-world problem.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
June 21st, 2015 at 11:19 am
As an extra added experiment in surreality, I tagged the post “Sad Puppies,” so certain parties will waste some of their brain energy looking for the (nonexistent) metaphor.
Comment By: Nick Sanders
June 21st, 2015 at 11:19 am
I have read the post and my epiphany was that you don’t feel any need to wash your underwear at least once before wearing them. You are a trusting man…
Comment By: Gef Fox
June 21st, 2015 at 3:18 pm
I look forward to how the tea leaves at the bottom of your undies drawer are read.
Comment By: Alison Spencer
June 22nd, 2015 at 7:27 am
Especially if passive aggressive trolling folks who already suspect you of something…. Best. Post.Title. Ever.
Comment By: Michele D Dekelbaum
June 21st, 2016 at 7:32 am
Too funny ?
Comment By: Frank Schildiner
September 4th, 2017 at 10:18 am
Which one is targeting you specially? Gay Basher McManly Nuts?
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
September 4th, 2017 at 11:18 am
Beale the Galactic Zero. I am not rushing to see.
Comment By: Frank Schildiner
September 4th, 2017 at 11:18 am
Oh, I gave up reading them a long time ago. It’s not worth the heartburn.
Comment By: Jude-Marie Green
September 4th, 2017 at 11:18 am
Excellent take down of Sad Puppies culture and milieu. Bravo.
Comment By: David Gerrold
September 4th, 2017 at 1:17 pm
I’ve had an encounter or two with individuals who I now think of as “sick puppies.” I don’t know if they identify with any other puppy group, but the behavior they demonstrated was shitty enough to earn them the sobriquet “sick puppies.”
Comment By: Tracey Claybon
September 5th, 2017 at 3:18 am
Oh no – the SPs and RPs are back?! ð¤¦ââï¸