Let me start by saying that I love and adore my wife. Marie is as vivacious (and loving and talented…) as any man could hope for in a spouse. My present subject, though, is her mischievousness. My girl loves the odd prank, whether it be hiding a blow-up doll in the shower, or simply bolting out of a closet to scare the bejesus out of me as I chance to walk on by. Her doll in shower gig was particularly memorable in that in that I came upon it—without my glasses—on a dark and drizzly November-morning while being less than fully awake.  Shades of Norman Bates, I only glimpsed the thing when I pulled the shower curtain back. Needless to say, I was completely spooked. I’m no John Glenn, so it would have been excusable if I ended up ass-over-teakettle on the floor. As it was, I did jump back into the doorframe and smack my head hard.

Dangerous bathroom stunts aside, today’s prank was all about my underwear; which I’ll get to in a bit. To put the whole thing in perspective, though, one needs to know that Marie tends to do the laundry in our household. To be frank, the very idea was something of a sore subject between us since, like most men in the laundry, I’m less than a beau ideal.

Anyway, on the day that this all started, Marie had come into my office with a perplexed look on her face. She had a carefully folded pile of my underpants in her hands; a sort of prop for the question that soon followed. “Why do you keep on messing up the underpants in your drawer?” She was truly perplexed that I would routinely disarrange her well-ordered rows of neatly folded briefs, and had no good idea as to why I would ever do such a thing.  The obvious answer, that I was a man and would never look upon such pointless order as an innate good, never once passed through her pretty little head. Instead, she came up with a bunch of “theories” (i.e. that I was searching for the softest one, or that I trying to avoid those pairs with saggy elastic, maybe even a couple of nefarious ideas she felt unable to mention.)

In any case, the answer was simplicity itself. I generally grab them when I’m less than half awake.  As such, the only miracle was that I didn’t routinely pull out the whole drawer to have it land on my foot.

Simple answer or no, the entire notion of “orderly underwear” struck a humorous chord, so as soon as Marie went to take a shower, I switched our underwear drawers.  If I was being mean, I might have crumpled up her panties, maybe even turned them inside out.  My prank being mild, however, the only thing I did was somewhat jumble the colors and spin them 180-degress around.  Then, as all such things go for me, I got distracted and ended up at my computer.  By the time Marie was done with the bathroom, it would be fair to say that I had almost completely forgot about what I had done.

Marie, of course, shrieked.  A good deal of further hilarity ensued, but the key takeaway was that “She owed me one.”  This occuring some three days ago, though, it was only natural that I forgot to be wary.  “Dut dut duh….”

As usual, after stepping out of the shower, I went to put on my underwear.  Marie was in her big closet, pretending to root around for something, but in all reality: waiting.  A perfect foil, I went straight to my briefs and tried to put it on.  Then, my foot getting stuck, I simply discarded them and went to get another pair.

The vexing thing from Marie’s perspective was that I took it all in stride.  I didn’t get vexed, I didn’t even think it was a strange occurance.  More than anything, I didn’t bother to examine what went wrong.  There had been a ripping sound, so I naturally thought that my underwear was old or bad or whatever, and thereby set it aside.

Marie, having sewn one of the legs shut, had been skulking in the closet; waiting for me to realize that “She got me!”  The fact that I totally missed her machinations, though, left her absolutely incredulous.  Which means only one thing.  There’ll be a more outrageous “underwear mishap” in my future, to be sure.