The Underwear Incident

Gathering with old friends to reminisce about the past is always fun. Every group has their stories, some that make for great conversation and others that are better off forgotten. Some are appropriate in mixed company and some need to be locked in a memory trunk, tucked in a remote corner of the brain’s attic and as far away from the mouth as possible.

My group of friends are no different and we can tell “remember the time” stories all night long, as we could do dumb stuff with the best of ‘em.

Whenever we get together, one incident always comes up. And we still laugh like we did when we were teenagers.

It was a hot night in the summer between high school and college. My buddies, Zeke, Ken, and I were bored, unable to agree how to spend our time. After multiple “nah’s” to suggestions, we finally decided to go swimming. We lived minutes from Calumet Park and Wolf Lake, both part of Lake Michigan, but for whatever reason decided to drive to a suburban water park. It was neither free nor convenient and we were probably too old to enjoy a water slide.

Back then, cut- off jeans were popular, so we just got in the car and drove there in what we were wearing. We didn’t stay long, but the slide left me with uncomfortable, wet underwear. They were irritating so I decided to take them off and carry them. It didn’t occur to me to just throw them away.

The seating arrangement for the ride back did not seem important as we got in but turned out to be.

Zeke drove, I was in the passenger seat and Ken on the driver’s side, backseat. We got all the way to a four-lane main thoroughfare in our neighborhood, when a car with three ornery girls sped up to drive parallel to us and, for unknown reasons, “gesture in an unfriendly way”. We were surprised, as it was unprovoked. A game of cat and mouse ensued until reaching a stop light, our car in the right lane.

A verbal exchange began, and to ensure she was being heard, the girl on the passenger side rolled her window down about half-way. She cocked her head at a slight upward angle, presumably to allow her voice to travel over the glass. Zeke and Ken looked to their left, while the other car focused on them.

As the barbs went back and forth, I had a great idea. From my passenger side window, I would loft the wet underwear high into the air, over our car and onto their windshield. No one would see me do this and it would look like it fell from the sky. The girls would freak out and drive away. We would have the last laugh.

It did not quite go as planned as the intended target was never hit. I missed the windshield entirely. Chalk it up to bad aim. However, the girl spewing profanities out of the passenger window, whose unnecessarily angry face just happened to be pointed awkwardly upward, was a direct hit. The underwear wrapped around her face like pizza dough. I couldn’t have done this again if I tried a hundred times.

From that moment on, time slowed down. Her reaction was as if a bomb exploded nearby, the shock wave thrusting her head backwards and then reverberating off the head rest and returning to an upright position. She immediately started screaming, causing the other two to do the same. Her hands and arms flailed wildly up and down. At no point did we see her attempt to remove the underwear. The carnage was horrifying – three obnoxious, screaming girls, one fashioning a 100% cotton mask. Kind of like a soothing hot towel on an airplane, except cold, damp, and disgusting. You just don’t see that every day.

Within seconds, the entire episode was over, and they sped off. Squealing tires, smoke, and taillights.

Our car? Complete shock. All three of us fell silent from the moment of impact. Still at the stop light, it began to sink in. The light may have changed a few times before we finally turned. We could only drive about a block before needing to pull the car over. There was uncontrollable laughter.

It took us a while to get composed. As soon as the laugh attack stopped, it would start again. No one was going to believe this. The image was hard to unsee.

However, it wasn’t quite over.

I suddenly had a moment-ruining thought. My mom heard that college students steal underwear from dryers in college dorms. Certain that it would prevent theft, she wrote my name on the elastic band of every pair that I owned (as if there is any way to prove some guy stole your underwear other than demanding to see his underwear.) Anyway, they had evidence, with my name very neatly printed in black ink. This was not so funny anymore.

I thought to myself, how do I explain this to the cops? “It wasn’t me, officer. Clearly, some jerk must have broken into our house, stole a pair of briefs from the dryer, dunked them in chlorinated water and went looking to throw them in someone’s car.” Not sure that would fly.

We decided to circle around the block, hoping that once she realized what hit her, those shorts would get tossed out fast. We drove cautiously, recalling the violent threat the girl in the backseat made as they took off. About a block away, a pair of Fruit of the Looms lay in the street. They went to college with me and were never stolen.

This column originally appeared in the Times, a Shaw publication.