Odysseus's Underwear

May 26 Odysseus’s Underwear

I went to my sister’s house
today to remove a few more of my
remaining possessions out there,
mostly a lifetime collection of yard tools,
and other assorted things that when you can’t
really find a place to put them in the
house, they end up in the garage:
old golf clubs of no value, rakes, shovels, a moon globe,
a few scraps of wood that I can find uses for.
I managed to find room for them in my
apartment garage where I think I will
do a Craig’s list ad and have a garage sale
one of these summer days,
and try to cash in on some of that
collected stuff.
But that’s not why I’m writing this today.
I’m writing this today because of my underwear.
I bought some new Hanes underwear size L/G, that is,
Large/Grande, on which the label is sewn
onto the right side of the elastic band.
Yes, you heard that right. The right side.
I bought those about a year ago,
and am finally able to write about
the trauma of it.
I like the fit, but that right side label
still perturbs me in the early morning
on occasion. More than once, I’ve lined up
that label like you do on a T-shirt,
for example, at the back, like most people
in most civilized countries would do,
and tried to insert my leg,
and there’s no hole where expected.
Try doing that on one leg
early in the morning.
I wear briefs, not boxers, which may be
more than you want to know, but which
is part of my life narrative, much like
Odysseus trying to get home to Penelope
was his life narrative. Odysseus never
had this problem with underwear.
Because if he had, I’m pretty sure
it would have been put in The Odyssey.