You are what you underwear

I AM defined by my underwear.

I didn’t know this until I found my daughter using my pants to clean the engine dipstick. She’d taken them off the Hills Hoist.

“But I thought they were rags!” she said.

“You are talking about my clothes!”

“But they’re old people’s clothes.”

“I am an old person! Well, nearly.”

I didn’t think any more about it until I found seven new pairs of underpants lined up on the bed.

I didn’t know they were underpants. I thought they were handkerchiefs.

I picked up one of the new pairs. Why they call them a pair I can’t imagine. There wasn’t enough material to make one half of a 30A bra.

I was going to chuck ’em out, but my wife beat me to it. She chucked out the old ones.

So I had to wear them. Shopping. I’ve raised blisters in shoes before, and sometimes from collars. Underpants are much more painful. And collars and shoes are never going to disappear up your bottom.

You can only hook them out so many times in one shopping trip without being arrested as a pervert.

I was going to look in at the pub, but somehow I felt exposed. They’d know. Don’t ask me how. But I would feel as if I was standing at the bar with no trousers.

Then it crossed my mind that I have no idea what kind of underpants they wear!

Are they strutting around town in artery-cutting briefs, or are they comfortable in something more roomy — whether they need it or not?

Come to think of it, I’ve been to Phil’s house and seen his smalls on the washing line. It looked like a square-rigger under full sail.

Phil suits his underwear.

It is faded blue and was once used at the docks to lift barrels — several at a time — out of ships. His wife’s are the white. They could lift ships.

Now I think about it, so could mine.

But that’s who I am! Or, as it turns out, who I was.

When you saw my washing line you knew you were looking at the home of a bloke who was at peace with the world, who was in his prime, liked a drink and a walk with the dog, and had a tendency to pontificate to anyone who would listen about almost anything – including underwear.

Now my underwear is orange, tighter than the boss’s wallet and just as hard to get into.

I don’t know what people are going to think when they see it on the line. But I know what I’m going to do.

I’m going to use them on the dipstick!