OYM Day 70: The Underwear Drawer
70… that’s a pretty big number. One more month of writing and I’ll have to figure out how to make this work in the real timeline of my life. The one that’s more than 100 days. But lest I get ahead of myself, I’ve still got a ways to go.
It says a lot about you, your underwear drawer. Depending on how you read the title, you’re either thinking about a small, retractable storage compartment, or an artist of the panty variety. Today, I’m talking about the former. Tomorrow, and days into the future, I will not be talking about the latter. But hey, who knows!
One evening I was out at my favorite bar with my dear friend. It’s an old cowboy bar in the middle of the desert. I don’t go there often, but when I do, I look for ghosts, drink terrible beer, and get offered shots from just about everyone, leaving with plans to see them again soon, although I never do. The bar is supposedly haunted by passengers of a small prop plane that crashed just a ways back from the shack of a building. There are bullet holes in the walls and when the weather is nice, they’ll bring out a terrified chicken for “chicken shit bingo”. If you’ve never heard of it, look it up.
I believe we had been discussing something about Marie Kondo and her philosophy for sorting and storing clothes. Then, I had a thought.
“What does your underwear drawer look like?” I asked her while she sipped her tequila. She gave one of those looks like “gee I thought you’d never ask.” We’ve been friends a long time and this is a good example as to why.
“I fold my underwear, mostly thongs and a few full size for that special week, and line them up by color. You?”
Ok. What?! I finished my beer. How does one fold a string? And how does one keep up with this routine of color coding your underwear? I imagined her comparing shades of nude and agonizing over her palette of cotton blends.
I also needed to know… is it in a drawer? Or one of those Tupperware stack things that people get in college and never seem to throw away?
She kept hers in her top drawer. It made me wonder why underwear is always in the top drawer. Why not the bottom? The one in the middle? Second from the left?
And why is it that people always hide things in their underwear drawer? A thief can most certainly pick out which drawer holds your underwear and your prized possessions on the first try. We should really get more creative.
What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever found in an underwear drawer? This isn’t to say that I look through them everywhere I go, but I’ve had friends and parents. I’ve seen a few things. I found a small container or rare coins in my dads underwear drawer. I have a small red velvet bag in my underwear drawer. You wanna know what’s inside? A part of my old wisdom tooth. It was a gift. This likely says a lot about me. Maybe too much.
If I knew more about social media, I’d start a hashtag: #showmeyourunderweardrawer . Do you fold? Or do you just toss everything in there, willy-nilly? Do you hide anything in there? Do you color code? Do you ever pull out a pair of underwear and say to yourself, “Whoa!Haven’t seen these in forever!” I’m genuinely curious.
A week later I received a text message. It was a picture of my friends underwear drawer, looking regal, organized, and like the rainbow.
