Teenage boy. Underwear. High School Classroom.
Innocuous enough on their own, these three things become quite the dilemma--and cause for humiliation to any awkward adolescent-- when they are somehow, inextricably grouped together.
So it’s a Sunday afternoon, and I’m at my friend’s house for some late Spring swimming fun: we dive in the pool catching rubber balls (emulating shortstop heroics), have underwater hold-your-breath contests, and engage in general tomfoolery. It’s a wonderful, stress-free weekend event. But little did I know that I was sewing the seeds of absolute mortification that would spring up just 24 hours later. You see, I had brought my bathing suit in my school backpack (which often served as my out-of-school all purpose bag—carrying stuff around the mall, tucking my mitt inside for baseball practices, etc.) , and upon arriving, and switched out of my t-shirt and shorts (and, umm… my underwear, of course), cramming the clothes in the recesses of my backpack. As it turns out, I just stayed in my bathing suit for the rest of the day (a habit that seems particular to tropic-heat, wet-clothes-to-dry [poof—like magic!] South Florida kids), went home in the early evening, took a shower, put on a new set of clothes… and, forgetting they were there, left my original clothes in my school backpack overnight.
No big deal. So there are some dirty clothes buried behind my algebra book, my psychedelic-patterned Trapper Keeper (ah, the 80’s!), and my first baseman’s glove. No big deal. So they sit there, unbeknownst to me, through three periods of school that Monday. Whatever. So I go to my fourth period class—American History, if I remember correctly—where I happen to be sitting right in front of a cutie, quirky Drama Club girl whom I’ve had a crush on since 6th grade, and haven’t said a word to beyond a muted “here” (as I passed back quizzes and such) despite being planted within five feet of her for the past seven months, sitting there listening to some lecture about the Underground Railroad or somesuch, while the undies lie unknowingly in the bag at my feet. Not a problem. So class is coming to an end, and the teacher asks to collect homework, and I fish out my aforementioned tacky three-ring binder to get out my paper on Frederick Douglass. Yadda yadda. So the slightly-used underwear, still there from yesterday, totally forgotten in my hectic school schedule rat-race, flops right beside my desk, as I pull out the binder. Hmm. So I grab it hastily and put it back in before—maybe-- anyone sees it (crisis averted?) EXCEPT, I suddenly realize, looking over my shoulder, one person did see it—youknowwho. Gulp. So the cutie girl I was too shy to ever talk to, make my identity and personality known to, now has basically one piece of information about me—that, for some reason, I carry my whitey tighties in my backpack. BIG DEAL. BIG PROBLEM.
Ah, the joys of awkward adolescence. A silly, mundane moment that feels like your pants falling down on a stage at a public assembly.
But let the real lesson be known: the undies on the classroom floor is not the problem. The clumsy reaction, the typical teen solution, is the problem. Had I just chuckled, turned around, and offered an easy, casual explanation to the girl as to the cause of my pair of underwear draped on the floor between us, it would have been no big deal. Heck, it might have been the “opening” I desperately needed to actual talk to her, share a silly, human moment, demonstrate my humor and my mellow temperament and (most crucially) my comfort-in-self. Maybe we would have dated, or at least become friendly acquaintances, fellow-travelers on the storm-tossed, gut-wrenching journey of adolescence. But the problem, of course (truly the defining problem of many of us in our teens), was that I didn’t have that aforementioned comfortable-in-my-own-skin brand of poise. And so, I did what any gawky, insecure teen boy was destined to do—I turned beet-red, I put my head on my desk, I did everything I could to shrink from the scene besides crawl --right with that underwear--into my backpack. And I never spoke a word to that girl (not even “here”) again, assuming she thought of me as the king of dorks, or worse, some kind of creepazoid.
Ah, but as they say, our difficult experiences help us grow into adulthood. And we can laugh about it when we’re adults, when we’ve (mostly) figured out not to take too many things seriously, especially OURSELVES.
But, ye gods, if I could just have that moment back!
