The Case of the Traveling Undies!

Have you ever had the honor of wearing a pair of traveling underwear? You know what traveling underwear is, right? “Well if you don’t, let me give you a general description. Traveling underwear, for all practical purposes, is panties, shapers and/or slips worn under your clothing. The main purpose of the concept of underwear is to cover up, shape up or conceal. Traveling underwear is underwear that either does not do its job, or does it half-assed, by traveling south.

It can be embarrassing I know, but hey, it happens. Just the other week I was walking around with a pair of the uncooperative travelers on.  All day long I was either stopping to hitch them up – much like the way the younger generation of men gesticulate when their oversized jeans drop below their butt cheeks. Anyway, so I’m hitching and also taking bathroom breaks to do a full on pull up throughout the day. I can hardly wait to get home and take the offenders off.

Now you may ask why I did not pull them off earlier in the day when I realized they wanted to go on the southern tour – and I have an answer. I don’t do commando. I know several women who do and enjoy it, but with the leaking that accompanies the aging of the Marvelously Mature, I’d rather have something to absorb the leaks other than my clothing. But let me continue with my story.

So, I get off work, go to my grandson’s school to do the mentoring thing and then take him to the store to purchase an outfit that he insisted he needed for the 70’s event the school was having. I got out of the truck hitching my shapers up as close as I could get them to my waist and over my ample derriere.

We walked into the store and did our usual shopping tag team: “Nick, stay near me.”
“Okay.” He says and does not because five minutes later: “Nick where are you? Boy didn’t I tell you to stay near me?”

“Grannie I was just looking…” “I don’t care. Do what I tell you child. Yada, yada, yada…”
All of my dialogue is said through clenched teeth probably because I was holding on to my traveling underwear for dear life.

Ten minutes later we have the outfit, have checked out and I am shuffling toward my truck. I can’t walk fast because the travelers are now down around my knees and about to drop to the tops of my boots. Just as I get to the truck, and think I have avoided the embarrassment of anyone seeing my drawers fall, Nick stops and looks at me frowning. He says, “Grannie, what’s that?” and points down. I look down and WOW!  There is only one way to describe it. My shapers have not just dropped to the tops of my boots, they are pooling around my ankles.

But ever the Marvelously Mature woman that I am, I open my truck door and slide into the driver’s seat (I had to slide in because I couldn’t pick my feet up without tripping over the southern travelers. “Boy get in the truck and mind your own business!” I snap – teeth still clenched. “But Grannie are those your…” Nick hush and put your seat belt on!” Poor baby. My drawers are falling and I’m yelling at him.

Now, a sane person would have trashed the undies as soon as she got home. I of course can claim no fame to sanity. Although I did throw that pair away a few days later, apparently it has siblings and I have a choice. I can throw all of my shapers away and start anew or I can take my chances and keep sliding them up my thighs praying that this isn’t a pair that belongs to the southern traveling family.

 I’m doing the latter – have you seen the cost of shapers? But this time I’m going to keep an extra pair of real underwear in my bag and if the travelers have managed to be a part of my wardrobe and start moving to the southern region, I will just pull them off and replace them with those old reliable Grannie drawers with the true elastic in the waist – bet they won’t start traveling.