Tuesday, January 11, 2011

the case of the lost underwear

I was 18 years old in my college dorm laundry room, sitting on one of the dryers and facing the boy I imagined myself in love with. We were using the toasty dryers as chairs, chatting, and waiting for our clothes to dry. A mutual friend, David, came in and joined the conversation as he changed his clothes from washer to dryer. He stopped and chuckled, “Oops, someone dropped their undies.” My mind froze and silently prayed to God that it wasn’t mine. The guy I liked leaned over to check out the lost underwear, thereby socially forcing me to join the peep show, and sure enough they were mine. They were the pink stripped ones that I hated. I laughed uncomfortably, trying to figure out the best plan of action. I though for a few seconds too long, and by the time David asked whether they were mine, I felt the option of claiming them had long since passed. I don’t know if I denied that they were mine because of the guy I liked, or because they were pink, but it was done and there was no backing down. When I exited the laundry room with the rest of my clothes and the boy I liked, I left the pink underwear on the floor. I pondered for a few minutes on returning to claim the underwear but didn’t’ want to find myself in the embarrassing position of running into either of the two boys and with the undies in my hand. Instead, I told my friends who laughed heartily at me, secretly found them, washed them in the sink, and left them in my mail box with a fake note from the boy I liked. To this day, I am ashamed of that denial.
I am not however, ashamed of my underwear anymore. Not to say I have nice underwear. They are actually mostly worn through pieces of fabric, decorated with barbed wire holes. I just don’t care if people see them, and really don’t have a choice in the matter. Washing clothes in Paraguay is very different than from my college dorm. I first put soap and water into a shallow bucket called a palingana along with the clothing. Then I use a bar of soap to suds the clothes more and scrub each piece of clothing thoroughly with my hands. When it comes to the tougher stuff like jeans, towels, and sheets, I lay it flat on one of my wooden chairs and scrub it with my bristle brush that conveniently doubles as my foot scrub, removing not only the red dirt, but also the top layer of skin. Once clean, and slightly more worn looking, the clothes are thrown into another palingana and I go through the process of rinsing and wringing out everything four times, dumping out the palinganas, and refilling as I go. This can be an exhausting process when the laundry includes a load of sheets, or a heavy blanket, or just half my wardrobe. Then everything has to be hung out to dry in my yard. This is all in plain site of my neighbors, with a nice, pretty row of colorful underwear and bras for good measure. People often walk by my hanging laundry while passing through my backyard. There is no option of denying whose underwear is whose. It’s all mine.
When I lived with host families, I had people wash my underwear for me, and comment on how nice it was. I had people take down all my underwear from their spot on the barbed wire to save it from the rain. Not only did people see my undergarments, but they touched them and talked about them too. When I do my laundry, one of my neighbors will typically comment on it. “You did laundry today Ali?” they ask, while looking over at my dripping clothes. No, I have let go of those reservations of claiming my pink or otherwise colored underwear. I now think it’s normal for guys to pass the row of underwear, neatly lined up outside my house. Maybe to them it’s just not as big of a deal, it’s just norm
al. Underwear is underwear and everyone has it (or should at least).
That same pink piece of underwear somehow lasted me through the rest of college and made it to Paraguay. Sometimes I laugh when I see it hanging outside my house for the world to see. If it happens to fall off the clothesline, I won't wait for a friend to claim it for me first.