The Story of my Underpants
During a period in my life about two years ago, a great depression had befallen me and I wasn’t really up to even performing the basic tasks one has to perform to get by. I basically collapsed onto the couch after work every day and stared at the wall or television, ignored bills, was generally gloomy and had fallen really behind on laundry.
Whenever I neglect to do laundry, I always run out of clean underwear first. This had happened a few times in the weeks previous and so, reactively, I had devised a system where in the morning, if I did not have clean underwear I would wash a pair out in the sink. The one unfortunate side effect of this procedure was that there did not appear to be any way to get the underwear dry enough for utilization. Let’s face it, damp underwear are not fun — especially in the wintertime. Sure, I would wring them out to the best of my abilities, but this would still not reward me with the optimum amount of dryness that I was looking for. Naturally, being the scientific minded individual that I am, I sought out various methods to resolve my problem through scientific experimentation, and began testing a few methods before settling into a steady one.
My first (and least desirable) option was to bring the underwear to the laundry room located in the basement of another building in the same complex that I lived in. This, being the most obvious, time consuming and laborious option was not acceptable due to the amount of steps involved:
- Hobble downstairs into the cold with no underwear on, with newly-washed underwear in tow in some sort of receptacle[ Why a receptacle you ask? Let me ask you a question, would you want to be the "Walking Around Half Asleep in the Early Morning Carrying Around a Solitary Pair of Wet Underwear Guy?" Yeah, I didn't think so either. ]
- Put the underwear in the dryer
- Hobble back up the stairs and wait approximately 15-20 minutes
- Hobble back down the stairs and retrieve underwear, placing it in aforementioned receptacle of some sort
- Hobble back up the stairs and put on underwear
- Hobble back down the stairs and stumble to work
Too much hobbling, not enough drying, I say! There had to be a better way, so I kept looking.
My second method involved the iron. The iron turns excess water into steam and lifts it away into the air, leaving my underwear warm and fluffy. Like a bunny, but in your pants. A fluffy pants bunny.
The iron idea had drawbacks, the most significant among them was the diligence required by myself to continually apply the iron to the underwear evenly until they were sufficiently dry. Ironing underwear to an appropriate dryness level required the kind of enthusiasm and concentration that I was not willing to bring to the table that early in the morning. So the iron was out, as was hair dryer, for similar reasons, although I tried that too.
Despite the unsatisfactory results, I kept searching until one day, I arrived at the obvious conclusion that the oven is clearly the best means by which to dry wet underwear.
Because, basically, if you think about it, what is an oven? It’s like a SUPER DRYER that doesn’t tumble. That’s what an oven is, friends. Its got a whole lot of heat! Therefore it dries underwear with much greater efficiency. Its even got a little light so you can check on your drying progress. This thing was made to dry underwear. Hell, I didn’t even have to carefully oversee the progress like I did with the iron. It did its thing, and I did mine. Underwear and I were again friends. I dried my underwear in the oven happily, and my underwear dried in the oven happily.
Until one morning
I was really tired and spacing out on the bed in my apartment, staring at the ceiling post-shower hoping that Wednesday would be cancelled, when my girlfriend at the time came into the room and deadpanned:
“Um, I think your underwear are on fire”
And it wasn’t a weird pickup line or anything like that. No. The apartment smelled like burning underwear and I was drying my underwear in the oven. These two things were probably in some way correlated.
Yeah, I don’t know. Hindsight is 20/20.
When I opened the oven door, thankfully, the underwear were not on fire. They were a badly charred combination of brown and black. The waistband had melted and resealed upon itself, but they were not on fire. I was glad. I was glad that I did not die in a horrible underwear fire. I was glad none of my enemies would ever get to see the headline “Jay Barnes Dies in Tragic Magnolia Gardens Underpants Fire.”
I was glad all around.
The other day I found the remains of the underwear in a box in my closet. I honestly have no intention of ever throwing them away. If I ever become very successful, rich, or famous — no matter what happens in my life that could possible elevate my ego to absurd and undeserved levels, I can always look to this very special undergarment, remember the events that occurred that day, and keep my feet planted firmly on the ground where they belong.