A ‘Brief’ Near-Death Experience

I don’t know if this is a curse or a blessing, but I’m pretty certain I know how I’m going to die. I can hear the coroner’s pen scratching now:

Cause of Death: Extermination by Underwear.

I figure it would only be manslaughter. I don’t think my underwear have it in for me, but who could blame them. I literally put them through the wringer.

Maybe I shouldn’t be glib. I did a quick Internet search for “Death from Underwear,” and learned from a BBC article that more than 6,000 people a year in the UK are injured by garments (mostly by tripping), including two women who were killed when lightning struck the metal clips in their bras.

Sadly, the Centers for Disease Control does not openly publicize U.S. deaths by underwear, but in a twist of irony, they do refer to all of their public death information as “Data Briefs.”

(By the way, searching for “Death from Boxers” does not yield pertinent information.)

One thing that journalists pride themselves on is getting to the bottom (ahem) of a story. So, here’s the long and shorts of it:

I was running late for fitness class, Friday, and after successfully negotiating the showering process, I rushed to get dressed. I grabbed a pair of my finest compression shorts out of the dresser drawer, and proceeded to finish dressing as I have thousands of times before.

Compression garments are those trendy athletic clothes that hit the markets a decade ago or so. They are made of moisture wicking space age fabrics, and the claim is that they are woven in such a way as to stimulate the muscles underneath. They are supposed to foster a better workout, a quicker recovery, and several lingering looks from the opposite sex.

I, of course, wear them for the better workout.

Well, I was standing in the middle of my dark bedroom, and after sliding the right leg through the opening in the underwear, I raised my other leg to insert similarly through the left. Because of the lingering moisture from my shower, the fabric didn’t slide up as quickly as I expected. Standing peg-legged like a heron, I just tugged harder. That’s when the middle toe of my left foot got caught on the spandex-like fabric at the bottom, sending me into free fall.

I tottered around the bedroom, trying to regain my balance. Instead of just dropping the underwear, and letting my leg return safely to the floor, I instead continued to yank. Soon I was pogo-sticking around the room, bouncing off first the dresser, then the bed, then the closet door.

However, it was when I reached to brace myself against the wall displaying my vintage Farrah Fawcett poster that things really became hairy. Instead of the wall, I was heading directly for the plate glass window!

I saw my life flash before my eyes, and I was about to flash everything else before my neighbors’.

It was at this moment that my toe dislodged, and the stretchy fabric sling-shotted up into nether-nether land, doubling me over in excruciation.

I know I should be embarrassed telling you all this, but I’m not. I blame my parents. Despite telling me for years that everyone puts their underpants on the same way, I know now that they don’t.

Let’s be glad.

John O. Marlowe is an award-winning writer for Sagamore News Media