an endangered species

I am so good about making sure the kids clothing is current and in good repair. Their socks don't sport holes and they always have plenty of underwear. Why then, do I slack when it comes to my own clothing? I was in desperate need of new underwear. I was doing laundry more often, not because I am so on top of my domestic duties but just because I needed clean underwear for the following day.

The other night I was out running some errands at our local superstore and remembered the dearth of undies in my undie drawer. So I marched myself over to the intimate apparel and wandered through the maze of bras (thank god I don't need new bras at the moment!) and stopped in front of the long wall of underwear. And that's when I remembered why I'd been avoiding this unpleasant little task. There were briefs, bikini's, string bikini's, boxers, boy style, hiphuggers, thongs, girdles, boxer-briefs and g-strings. There were low cut briefs and hi-cut bikini's. There was lace and satin and ewww! polyester. Underwear in every shade and pattern. Black, pink, green, yellow (YELLOW?), red, floral, geometrics, cutesy prints, and even character sets (think underoos for grownups... which just begs the question, why???). And the sizing. Does underwear need to come in petites and talls? Because, I really don't think it does.

I stood there and did not know where to begin my search. All I wanted, call me boring, was some plain old white cotton bikini underwear. Not red, yellow, green, blue or even black and definitely no prints of any kind. Where was it hiding in this literal sea of bloomers? I started in the middle of the wall, not sure why, but realized I was getting confused and couldn't remember if I had looked at that particular floral pink pair of bikini style before or was that in the hi-cut low rise hiphugger? So I moved all the way down to one end and started over. Every so often I would get all excited because I'd see packages of all white cotton only to have my hopes dashed when I realized they were granny panties. When I arrived at the end of the wall of bloomers I still had buttkis. I slunk out of there with a package of three white cotton bikinis and three black. Not too bad, but not exactly what I wanted. Hmmmmm, maybe I should go back and stock up on them in case they become further endangered? I mean, I know it's not exactly what I wanted but what if they nix the white ones from the package altogether and I'm left with just black? What will I wear under my khaki's or whites? I think I may have to. At the very least it'll guarantee I won't have to shop for underwear for a while.