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94

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#94. I wear boxers, but I do have an emergency pair of briefs.

Okay, so maybe this is a little more than you need to know about me. Or maybe it gives you a window into my very soul, allowing you to infer things about me and my life that I don’t even know yet. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s another lame excuse for me to talk about underpants. I’ll never tell.

So, my ‘tight pinch tighty-whities’, if you will, are left over from my earlier days. You see, I was always a brief man. Close and snug, that’s where I wanted my boys down there. Where I could keep an eye on ’em, lest there erupt any funny business. I feared that boxers would give them too much leeway, and they’d flip and flop around all willy-nilly, and I’d never get anything accomplished. Willy-nilly flip-flopping can be very distracting, you see.

I suppose we all start out as brief men, don’t we, fellas? I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a young child with boxers before. Well, not around his waist, anyway. I suppose I’ve seen a few with undies on their heads, careening around like a spooked flightless bird, giggling and squawking. But that doesn’t count. First of all, I’m pretty sure the boxers didn’t belong to them. And secondly, they weren’t making proper use of them. So no points there.

Now, I made the switch relatively late. After college sometime, as a matter of fact. Actually, most of the guys in the freshman dorms were briefers, come to think of it. I — thankfully — saw less and less men in their underpants after getting out of that cattle car of creepiness, but I don’t remember seeing too many boxers after that, either. Maybe I just didn’t do a good job of noticing what my fellow guys were wearing under their pants. Bad luck for you, I suppose.

Anyway, somewhere along the way, I obtained a couple of pairs of novelty boxers. I remember one pair with a cow print, and another made of silk. (Mmmmmmm… silk… nnngggghhhh…) I didn’t wear them often. (But I wore them well. Ooh, snap, yo.) But eventually, I started getting more comfortable with them. I’d wear them to bed, to let little Johnny and the cowpokes get some air. You know, relax after a hard day. Lie back in a nice breeze, that sort of thing.

Well, after a while, I started working the boxers into the undie rotation. Slowly, at first — for a while, I was a tighty-whitey guy with an emergency pair (or two) of boxers. They’d be the last ones I’d wear before laundry day. But gradually, I started wearing them more often. My wife bought me another pair or two along the way; I could almost wear boxers for a whole week straight! And so I did. Yes, I did.

Finally, I took the plunge. I went to a department store and bought a six-pack. Now I could feed my boxer habit for a good ten days or so, which would usually get me to laundry day. Over the years, I’ve added to the collection — and lost a couple of the little guys — and now I go boxers, or not at all.

(Well, okay, I go boxers; I’d rather go dirty than go commando. Not that I mind having my business rubbing all up against my shorts, or my jeans. Actually, I think that would be a perfect excuse to give people even weirder looks than I do now. Sort of a ‘guess what Santa’s got for you‘ kind of thing. Or a ‘hey, why don’t you pull my finger now and see what happens‘ look. Really, I think that part would be pretty damned entertaining.

No, for me, it’s the ‘beans and franks’ issue. That’s the thing about that scene from There’s Something About Mary where the kid gets his jewels all jumbled. That should never happen, unless you’re going commando. Never. Doesn’t matter what kind of undies you’ve got on, folks. All men know the three-step procedure to put the snake back in the cage. You shake, you tuck, and you zip. It’s second nature; even easier to remember than ‘Stop, Drop and Roll’.

The tuck is the important step for our purposes here. You tuck Mr. Willikers back into the undies precisely to avoid the sort of unpleasantness portrayed so graphically in the movie. Sure, you might get nicked, if you’re still dangling out the barn door. It’s possible you might even break the skin. But with all that fabric in the way, protecting you, there’s no way you can get the beans above the franks and zip ’em all up together. *shudder* And thank heaven for that, too. Nobody should have to go through that.)

Okay, where the hell was I again? Ah, boxers. Gotcha.

So, anyway, I never actually wear my emergency pair. But I did keep the one pair of briefs when I threw the others away, just in case. (Maybe I did listen to anything my mother ever said, after all.) I’m not sure exactly what ‘case’ would cause them to come in handy, but there they are — jammed in the back of the underwear drawer with the dress socks and the handkerchiefs my parents once decided I needed. (It’s… um… nah, just don’t ask.)

So, should that time ever come when briefs are needed, I’ll be ready. I just hope the emergency isn’t a two-day event, ’cause I’ve only got one pair. And with all that closeness and rubbing going on when you wear the tighties, it’s a little harder to reuse them without washing. Not, um, that I ever did that, of course. As far as you know, anyway.

See? There are still some things left that I won’t tell you. Thank your lucky stars, too. You don’t know what kind of horrifying shit you’re missing over here.)