"I could hide out under there...

...I just made you say 'underwear." - Bare Naked Ladies from their song "Pinch me"

On Saturday I got to go to the laundry mat. As I've said in the past, that is by far one of my most favorite places to go. When people ask me what I would do if I ever won the lottery, almost immeadiately my first response is "Buy 4 washers and 4 dryers." Because let's be honest - one washer takes forever. To do your laundry is like an all day chore. At a laundry mat, though, you can be done in about 1 1/2 hours. Maybe two if you're drying towels.

As I was at the laundry mat on Saturday I got to be thinking about underwear. What is the shelf life of underwear. From age 0 to age 4, the shelf life of the underwear is until the next poo; Anywhere from a few hours to a few minutes. From age 5 to age 11 the underwear seems to have a shelf life of about a year as your little butt grows bigger and bigger and your underwear gets tighter and tighter. Additionally, in boys at least, those years are filled with the abuse of staining them with mud, blood and rug burns as boys do the things that boys do.

Also during those 6 years the style of Underwear changes. Panties start out pink with "My Little Pony" graphics on them. Boys underwear is blue with images of "Transformers" or "G.I. Joe" on them. Then over time, at least for guys (I'm not privledged to know what my 5th grade female classmates were wearing under those bratty smiles), the underwear becomes less action figure orionated and more colored. For example, mine were dark reds and blues.

In 6th grade - the piniacle of the elementary career; the big fish in the small pond experience where those little 1st grade fish hide from you as you swim down the halls - most schools allow you to go to science camp. (My first and last time kissing a banana slug.) My brother had the foreknowledge to change from the colored underwear to Whitey Tighties. (this benefitted me, because Mom bought me some Whitey Tighties prior to my 6th grade science camp which saved me a ton of embarrassment dished out to the other colored underwear children.)

The Whitey Tighties rule your world for another 2 to 5 years. The range is incomplete because in high school I was introduced to something called "Boxers." Boxers are the underwear that are just like shorts. Some people in high school really got into them. I didn't, so I stayed in the 5 year catagory with my Whitey Tighties.

Another thing introduced in high school is something called the thong. KNJ and I decided that a thong is really nothing more than butt floss, for those girls trying to avoid getting a butt cavity. If they ate less sugar they wouldn't need the butt floss thong.

Finally, if you are Mormon, you get special undergarments to remind you of the sacred covenants you made to God. Most members get this when they are 19 or older depending on when they are ready to make those covenants.

Then at age 65 or older, your underwear changes back to a shelf life of a few hours, waiting for the next poo.

I am currently in those Mormon Undergarments years that span 45+ years. And this is what has me thinking...What is the shelf life of my undergarments? Most of my current undergarments come from a trip I made in 2002 to Boise with my mother. I'm not sure where Mothers get these ideas in their heads, but she decided I needed new undergarments. I have a few pairs newer than that because it was easier to buy more than do laundry. But for the most part, my undergarments are 7 - 4 years old. I wonder what their shelf life is?

(And people think my thought process is weird - who would have thunk?)