My mom always told me to wear nice, clean underwear when I was a kid. You never know when you might be in a car accident, she said, and someone may see them…
My mom said that because I’m sure her mom told her the same thing… it’s one of those funny things that moms worry about… you should just always wear clean underwear… end of story.
Someone told me one time that they followed that rule of thumb and ended up in a car accident… of course, they were wearing their nice, clean underwear… but the EMTs had to cut her underwear off her. Her lovely, clean underwear ended up in the trash.
So maybe clean underwear in a car accident isn’t so important after all.
It turns out moms still have opinions on underwear even after you are grown.
Not long ago, I was out with my mom, daughter, and sister-in-law, and for some reason, we were talking about underwear. Three of us were lamenting about what terrible shape our underwear were in… some of us had worn out elastic, some of us had bleach spots on ours, and some of us admitted that we had holes in ours… to put it gently, 3 of us needed new underwear.
My mom quickly pointed out that underwear are an essential garment, and you should always have nice new underwear… She informed us that she had recently ordered $100 worth of new underwear. She has one style she loves, orders new ones every year, and throws away the old, worn-out ones.
Life, she said, is just too short to be wearing old, uncomfortable underwear.
The 3 of us scoffed at this idea. Surely spending that kind of money on underwear was unnecessary; certainly, you didn’t need to do it every year. I mean, let’s face it, underwear are just not comfortable. They ride up and work their way into places you don’t want them creeping into. Why do we even need to wear these things? I mean, there is just nothing comfortable about them. There’s always a sigh of relief when you can finally remove them and hop into a hot shower in just your birthday suit. Life is just better without underwear, so why worry about them being old or holey… they’re never going to be comfortable anyway, right?
When I went shopping with my mom this week, we ended up in an underwear store. She told me it was time to “put my big girl panties on” and buy some new underwear. She walked me through her favorite ones and why she liked them. I decided to buy a few pair to test over the next couple of days.
I bought 4 different styles and tried them out over the next two days.
I slept in one pair the first night, and to my amazement, they didn’t ride up. They were super comfy, and I slept without waking up every few hours to remove the inevitable wedgie.
The following morning after my shower, I tried another pair. Those started out feeling amazing. When I pulled my pants up, the underwear didn’t come with them. Those darned things stayed right in place over my butt cheeks. As luck would have it, they were comfortable the entire day. They didn’t move an inch, didn’t bind me in any way, and always stayed in place, even when I pulled my pants up after going to the bathroom. I kept expecting them to disappoint me in some way, but in every test I gave them, they passed with flying colors. They even showed outstanding performance when I tried on clothes. It was a miracle.
That night I tried pair number 3. This pair had a lace waistband. They were pretty, but they didn’t feel nearly as good as the first two pair. I just wasn’t impressed. The pretty lace rubbed my skin, they didn’t stay in place like the ones before did… they just didn’t make the cut. Since I had experienced what good underwear felt like the day before, it didn’t take me long to strike these off my list.
So, I switched them out for the last test pair the next morning. Once again, to my amazement, those suckers stayed right in place almost all day long. This pair required removing a couple of wedgies, but they were still 99 percent better than every pair I had at home in my underwear drawer.
After testing all 4 pair, I returned to the underwear store.
Since pair number two was clearly the winner, I purchased 10 of those and a couple of my other two favorites.
Though the lace ones were by far the prettiest, I didn’t buy any more of those. They looked good, but they didn’t feel good.
I spent $100 on new underwear. I walked out of that store with my head held high.
I made a big girl purchase and felt good about it.
I had made a change that I had been extremely hesitant to make.
Walking away from the old and embracing the unknown new was better than I ever could have imagined.
Yay for new underwear!
The sad news is that all those lovely new underwear are still in the car. We didn’t get home from our shopping trip early enough to unload all our goodies. We just brought in our luggage and decided to unpack the rest and divide up our purchases tomorrow.
So, you know where that leaves me tonight… yep… wearing these old worn out underwear.
I have removed countless wedgies in just the past few minutes.
I. Am. Miserable.
And less than one week ago, this was my norm. This was as good as it got. In my mind, these old underwear I’m wearing now were perfectly sufficient.
I was wrong.
I didn’t even know I needed something new until I tried something new.
I didn’t even know I was uncomfortable until I wore something that was actually comfortable.
I was comfortable in my uncomfortableness…
I didn’t even know I was miserable before.
I didn’t realize that one change could make such a huge difference.
My mom was right.
Good underwear really are worth the money.
Life is too short to wear uncomfortable underwear that creep into places we don’t want them to…
Wedgies are miserable and as it turns out, all underwear don’t cause wedgies…
Who knew?
And different people like different styles, cuts, and brands of underwear. It isn’t a one size fits all kind of thing.
But in the end, the right underwear really can be comfortable…
Maybe church is more like underwear than I ever thought…
Until Next Time,
Whitney