The brief truth and nothing but the brief truth.

It puzzles me how there is a cultural stigma that goes along with whether or not you choose to wear boxers or briefs. Perhaps I just don’t understand this all to foreign concept to me as I don’t have to go over the complex decision each time undergarments are purchased.

For my own experience I know that I don’t attach a certain stigma to a certain type of underwear simply because I understand that each serves its’ function for the wardrobe necessity at hand. The thong or granny panty debate is not necessarily a raging one unless the person in questions pants are too low for their own good. But the reality of the trivial debate should truly be discussed in the female’s poorly purchased pant choice.

Anyway, so this story is a classic Kelsey moment.

I was about 15 and I happened to be volunteering at a summer camp. The paid staff had been given the luxury of a staff thank you dinner across the island in which we worked on.

One would think that the staff who deserved the most thanks were those who were not given a stipend sum at all. The heart felt gratitude was just supposed to be absorbed I suppose. Nevertheless, as their staff thank you, everyone had dumped their laundry in the laundry room before they left.

This caused several displeased exclamations among those that stayed behind. For one we were in charge of making sure the camp was spotless upon the return of the absentees, and secondly most of us had overdue laundry loads that were weighing heavy in our laundry baskets.

I, with every intention of doing the right thing, got to the laundry room and surveyed the sea of undergarments. With a strong dislike for touching other people’s personal items, I turned around on my heel before something caught my eye. A curling piece of yellowed paper adhesively dangled from the dingy wall with the words, “Do a good deed, help those in need.” (Those may not have been the exact words I read, however, I know they rhymed whatever they were.) I was assuming that the paper, strategically placed in a public laundry mat, was referring to the laundry that senior management had placed in a mound on the floor.

So a friend of mine and I started doing loads of laundry. We got to the last load and my friend started to laugh. She poked at it and pointed at it with a huge smirk on her face.

“You know who’s that belongs to?”

I knew where she was going with it before I responded but feigned stupidity. “Oh?”

“The Vancouver Sun Run shirts are only one indicator of who’s pile that is.”

I continued to ignore her. I knew very well that my summer crush wore only one outfit and one outfit only. A pair of workman’s pants or jeans and every Vancouver Sun Run shirt there was from the day it started. I was unsure why the individual in question collected so many of them considering he wasn’t running a 10 Kilometre race at the age of 2 but I chose not to ask because I was partially petrified of the opposite sex at the time.

Needless to say, it was the simplest recognition to pick out the fact that I was about to dive into the personal treasures of someone that barely knew I existed. I held my breath closed my eyes and dove my hand in the sea of clothing. I hoped that whatever my claw produced would be a Sun Run t – shirt, somewhat filthy but not as awkward and as intimate as a different item.

BOOOM. “BLllleleleleleleleleleleleleleleleh!”

Shocked I threw my hands up in the air as the stillness was ruined by another friend barreling through the door behind me yelling at the top of his lungs.

The garment which happened to be the very item I wished not to touch went sailing in a perfect arch in slow motion heading straight for the point of no return – the back of the 50 year old washing machine against the wall adjacent from us.

No. What did my hand just touch??? I sure hope it wasn’t tighty whities. Oh, but it was.

The person who came barreling through the door stood there and just unleashed the laughter. It wasn’t funny in the least bit. I was stunned and mortified.

It took 3 people later and one dirty dryer to reveal the not-so-white, now grayish black underwear. By this point, all the loads had been done and my new indigo jeans load was the remaining one to add in the gross underwear.

The underwear went in and slid out and were folded just in time for the van of senior staff to pull up to the camp. The next morning during breakfast, my crush leaned over and asked me who had done his laundry. My response said something to the effect of a “collective effort.”

Looking back on the events, I could have just thrown the tighty whities out but I was too honest. Those permanently stained blue underwear were a beacon and a reminder of what happens when you don’t pick up after yourself. Let it be a lesson to you all. The fact that the story involved my crush was just coincidental. Never again will I do someone else’s laundry without their permission first.