Wearing Underwear Wrong
A Life Lesson
It is noon, 6 days since leaving home, 5 days of business travel, 4 hours into my travel day, and 3 months into my 58th year. I’m standing at the 2nd urinal from the right in the restroom on the B concourse at Cincinnati Airport, frantically searching with my left hand and wrist deep inside my pants zipper for the front underwear fly. The initial concern turned to humility when I realized the unthinkable. For the first time in my life, I found my underwear on backward.
Sure, I’ve put them on backward while at home but never left the house without notice. I’ve gone commando on numerous occasions when I’ve simply forgotten to pack a pair, and I’ve certainly worn dirty underwear when the situation mandated it. But never have I gone half a day with them on backward. At least as far back as I can remember.
The outcome of this tragic situation eventually turned positive in 2 ways.
First, I was able to make the underwear fly directional change successfully by moving the scene to a stall. Correcting the underwear faux pas provided me with the satisfaction of properly using the convenience of modern underwear technology for the remainder of my trip.
Second, I confirmed that at my age I still have the balance to do a complete lower-half underwear fly directional change without touching the public bathroom floor. Admittedly, the walls of the narrow stalls helped, and the fact that at the last minute, I decided to wear slip-on shoes versus lace-up running shoes was an advantage, but a huge confirmation that I’m still flexible, exhibiting extraordinarily good balance for a middle age man.
As I replayed this event, I’m reminded of a somewhat similar thing that happened to my wife a few years ago. She is an industrial engineer who is required to wear full-on industrial engineering safety gear when she enters most facilities. Gear includes a hard hat, safety glasses, ear plugs, FR (fire-rated) outerwear, and lace-up steel-toed boots.
She texted me a photograph early one morning while in her hotel room in a small paper mill town. She had perfectly laced up both calf-height steel-toed boots before remembering to put on her pants.
These events and the outcomes reminded me of a recent Stoic reading from The Obstacle is the Way, by Ryan Holiday. He said that in every situation you have 2 elements: the event and the judgment of that event. The event itself is neither good nor bad, it’s objective. The judgment we choose to place on that event is subjective, and completely in our control. It is not to suggest that when life hands us shit we shouldn’t get emotionally sad, angry, or happy. But the duration and extent following those initial emotions are our choices and a choice we should think through using reason. To choose a long negative outcome to a situation, a victim mentality of sorts is choosing a life of anger, sadness, and grief. Choosing the decision to find a positive outcome is another choice typically leading to personal growth and a happier life. Both choices are completely in our control.
In my situation, standing at the airport urinal and suddenly learning my underwear was on backward was the objective event. It wasn’t a great situation but one I chose not to get upset about and to deal with it, then search the list of positives.
Positive outcomes include a great lesson learned and the value of a funny story to share among my wife, friends, and now here with you.
