You’ve heard that advice about wearing clean underwear when you leave your house so if you’re involved in a serious accident and are taken to a hospital you won’t be embarrassed, right?
Well, after Kathleen and I worked all day Saturday re-mulching the garden, I took a shower, shaved, and volunteered to drive up the road a piece to the nearest Chinese restaurant to buy some take-out food to bring home and eat in front of the television. The plan was to eat Chinese food, watch the Seattle Mariners baseball game and fall blissfully asleep on the couch before dragging our poor tired (and overworked) bodies off to bed.
When I finished my shower I put on a pair of chinos that I had worn the previous day, but had not worked outdoors in (so they were clean). Trouble is, when I retired to bed the previous night I had shucked my chinos and underwear off in one move so that the underwear were still in the chinos when I put them on to go for Chinese. I donned clean underwear before pulling on my chinos, but I failed to notice the “soiled” underwear was still inside.
I drove to the restaurant, and in pouring rain and hail, parked, walked next door to Safeway to see if that store was offering a better deal on Chinese food, but it wasn’t, so I walked back to the restaurant, ducked inside out of the pouring rain and hail and proceeded to place my order for sweet and sour chicken, fried shrimp, pork-fried rice and chow mein. While waiting for my order, I paced around the restaurant (it’s pretty small). When my order was ready I paid for it and prepared to leave.
Before I had taken two steps toward the door, the female cashier who had taken my order came scurrying around from behind the cash register, bent over by a table and picked a pair of red plaid boxers up off the floor and held them up gingerly by the tips of two fingers and said, “Oh My God! Look at this! A pair of boxer shorts. Somebody’s left their underwear on the floor!” At the time there was just me and one couple in the small dining area. A couple of guys, however, had come and picked up their orders and left.
We all shot the cashier our best denial looks, “It couldn’t have been me” and I even stuck a finger under my belt to make sure I had shorts on. The cashier carried on, “ewing and yucking” so I got the heck out of the restaurant as fast as I could. It wasn’t until I was safely back in my truck and about to leave the parking lot that the horrid realization hit me. Those shorts looked like mine! In fact, I was pretty sure they were mine. They must have gotten hung up in my pants and I hadn’t noticed; they picked the most inopportune moment in the restaurant to slide down my led into a heap on the floor.
Trust me when I tell you I did not go back into the restaurant and claim my shorts. NO Way! This was like one of those deals when you do undercover work for the CIA and they tell you if you get caught they will disavow any knowledge of you. As far as I was concerned, I had never seen those sorts before.
I debated whether to tell Kathleen and you all about my little incident, but figured what the heck. We all need a good laugh and unless the FBI knocks on my door the next couple of days with my shorts in hand and asks, “Mr. Perkins, do you recognize this pair of underwear” this memory of my senior-moment faux pas will someday fade away.
You will let it fade away won’t you?
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