The Trick is to Drive Fast Enough to Dry Your Underwear

So my son wears these things called compression shorts. All they really are is thick, padded underwear that support and maybe protect his special parts during his uber-active day lifting weights, playing football and generally getting the snot knocked out of him. Thing about it is, these shorts are not cheap and are sort of hard to find. So he has only two pair.

To his credit, he does bring them home for washing on occasion. Even on days other than weekends, which, according to his mother, is still not enough. Regardless, they do get washed from time to time which is more than I can say for other things that live in the boy’s locker room. Honestly, have you ever been in one? I helped decorate once before homecoming game and the FIRST thing us moms did was hang about a thousand of those pine scented tree shaped thingies from just about everywhere! It sort of smelled like a sweat soaked forest when we were done but it helped.

Obviously though, not all the boys are as fastidious as mine.

But then, lest I get too cocky, I might want to remind myself about that time years ago when he first started going off on weeklong campouts with the scouts. I had dutifully helped him pack: used six one-gallon zip lock bags, vacuum packing a full set of his underthings into each bag: a pair of boxers, a tee shirt, a pair of socks. I was okay with him taking only five pairs of pants, figuring that he could wear the same pair one or two times. He was, after all, camping. And he is, after all, a boy. Imagine my surprise when he came home and only three of the zip lock bags had been cracked open.

“You wore three pairs of underwear for seven days!”

Subsequent camping trips went a little differently. I didn’t bother helping to pack and when he got back home, I just hosed him off in the back yard before letting him in the house.

Anyway, back to the underwear. Most times, when he brings them home for washing, he remembers to do it the night before. But sometimes he’ll forget to throw them into the dryer so I’ll walk into the kitchen the next morning to the sound of the dryer tossing around two items. And here I could launch into a whole rant about wasting energy and electricity and money and blah, blah, blah. But to be honest, it’s been done and said and said and done . . . and still he dries two pair of underwear by themselves in the morning. I imagine he might change his tactics when it’s him paying the electric bill and not us.

Anyway . . . of course the shorts don’t get all the way dry in the few minutes they have to tumble. And here I have to take a little diversion and explain that my son does not have his license yet. His dad and I told him a long time ago that he can get his license when he makes his Eagle Scout. As of this writing, he’s close, but not there yet. In the meantime, he has his permit and is getting plenty of practice driving himself to school. The downside is that I have to be there to bring the car back home.

So on those mornings when I wake to the sound of the dryer, I know exactly what my job will be.  Yep, I’ll be dangling his underwear out the passenger side window while he drives to school. And he’ll be taking the longer route, the one with the straight stretch that lets him get up to the 40 MPH speed limit and, hopefully, get enough wind action on his underwear to help the drying process.

The other morning we got behind a pickup truck with an old guy in it and I actually heard myself say, “I hope that guy drives fast enough to dry your underwear.”

Is it weird that this sounded perfectly normal to both of us?

Anyway . . . I’m left thinking a couple things: 1) how, when he drives really fast, I get a pretty good workout on my underwear holding arm and 2) we moms sure do some bizarre things for our kids.