Panties in Stuff

There had probably been other signs that I had missed, but the first time it really came to my attention was about a month ago when I was doing laundry. I was folding and sorting and just happened to notice that there hadn’t been a single pair of underwear from my son anywhere in the laundry. It’s not the sort of thing I would normally pay attention to, but for whatever reason it happened to stand out to me and I thought it was weird. A week’s worth of laundry yet no underwear was a little odd. But I almost immediately forgot about it.

The following weekend I was doing laundry again and wasn’t thinking at all about my son’s underwear until I folder a pair and realized it was the only pair in all of the laundry. This of course reminded me of the previous week, and it left me even more confused. No underwear one week, only one pair the next week, something strange was going on. I told myself I’d ask him about it, but then again quickly moved on to something else and forgot.

But the next weekend, which was last weekend, the same thing happened. One pair of underwear. I started thinking about it. He’s 15. If he’s really changing his underwear this infrequently, he could have a real hygiene problem. It’s never fun to have a conversation like that with your kid, but I didn’t want to let myself forget again.

I went to his room where he was laying on the bed looking at his phone. I asked him if I could talk to him about something and then closed the door to give a little privacy. I came right out with it. I explained how few pairs of underwear I’d been seeing in the laundry lately and that I was worried he wasn’t changing often enough. I said that I knew this wasn’t something he wanted to talk about with his mother, but I reminded him for health reason he really needed to change underwear every day.

I literally saw the color of his face change, and I could tell from his whole demeanor that he was very embarrassed. I didn’t want to make him feel that way. I really just wanted him to know the importance of clean underwear. I asked him to do his best to remember to change every day and I was about to leave his room rather than make us both more uncomfortable when he said, “I have been changing every day.”

I said, “You must have a pile of dirty underwear somewhere then because they haven’t been making it into the laundry.” I was being mostly sarcastic, and trying to be funny, because I was sure he was just saying that to defend himself and he really hadn’t been changing his underwear.

His embarrassment was so strong I could just feel it in the air. He said, “I don’t like my underwear. I don’t like to wear it.”

I said, “Honey, we can get you new underwear, that’s perfectly fine.” I suggested we could even go shopping that afternoon.

He seemed mildly happy with that idea. His whole underwear collection consisted of regular white briefs. I was thinking he was ready to start wearing boxers, which made perfect sense at his age. I was so sure that was a correct presumption that I said to him that we could go get him boxers and he could pick out whatever he wanted.

He shook his head. He said that his sisters got to wear such cute underwear and he didn’t understand why he couldn’t wear cute underwear too. I remember thinking it sounded weird for him to use the word “cute.” I think I agreed that girls underwear is cute and boys underwear isn’t, but I was confused by his observation.

Regardless, I gave him the response that seemed obvious. I said that he could wear cute underwear if he wanted. “You can wear whatever underwear makes you happy.”

He repeated, “I want to wear cute underwear.”

I left his room kind of wondering if he was really saying that he wanted to wear girls underwear. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought it really didn’t matter at all. If that’s what he wanted, it was fine with me.

That afternoon we went shopping. I asked him what store he wanted to go to and he said he wasn’t sure, but then added that Target would be fine. I wanted to make it clear that I was being supportive, so I responded, “There’s lot of cute underwear at Target.”

When we got to the store I asked if he wanted me to go in with him, or if he just wanted money. He said that I didn’t have to wait in the car, but he’d rather be left alone to pick out his own underwear. Valid point, so I went in with him and browsed while he was shopping.

About 20 minutes went by and I turned a corner in the store to find him looking down the aisle towards me. His hands were full but from the distance I couldn’t tell what he had. I walked towards him and as I got closer I could tell he was holding various types of women’s panties. I wasn’t completely shocked. I thought that was probably what he’d been hinting at. But it was interesting to finally get the confirmation of something he’d never said directly.

It didn’t bother me in the slightest and I wanted to emphasize that I had no problem with it. I asked him to show me what he’d picked out and as he displayed them I said, “Those ARE really cute, I like what you’ve chosen.” I paid for them and he left.

On the drive home I decided to once again make it clear that I didn’t see anything wrong with this situation. I commented that I was glad he had underwear that he liked now.

This morning while I was doing laundry I found a whole week’s worth of his panties. I folded them normally and put them with his clean clothes.