I remember the day when I wore no underpants to school. As an adult, I don’t know how my mother could have let me out of the house without checking. It wasn’t like this was a regular habit of mine. Who knows, maybe it was, but I doubt it. It was just something simple that I must have overlooked; a significant thing that I must have neglected between getting ready for school and getting to school. How I found out I’ll never forget. Sitting in the back seat of my mother’s Mercedes Benz, dressed in my usual thick red and black plaid school uniform dress and suddenly realizing that my butt cheeks were cold from the car sitting outside all through the night. It was then that I knew that I didn’t have on any underwear because my underwear would have given me some resistance to the cold seats but none of that was occurring this autumn morning in northern California.

It’s odd how something so important could be forgotten. On the outside, I looked fine. I had my blue knee high socks on and my hush puppies. I had on my short sleeve white peter pan collar shirt on. I had my jacket on and my lunch box with scenes of “Close Encounter of the Third Kind” was with me holding my lunch, but no panties. I wonder now if I even had any clean underwear to wear and so in the midst of my daily morning ritual I was stumped and did not address the issue immediately. Knowing my mother, always in a rush to go somewhere and never available for help, probably dangled her keys at the front door in search for the one to start up the old Mercedes Benz. Much to Pavlov’s theory, my little brother and I would scramble whenever we’d hear those keys because the myth in our house was that if we don’t hurry up and come on then we’d be left behind. A cruel fear factor game that my mother used to play on but which was more than real for me. Hence, I can see how I would forget such an important piece in my wardrobe for the chance not to get left behind.

Ironically, I really don’t recall at all what happened once I arrived to school. I do remember feeling embarrassed though no one knew or could know but me. The power of me: the consciousness of a child. How could I be so insecure? Why I didn’t find it freeing or funny or anything but serious is just a reflection of which I am. I was a serious child however I do not recollect what happened for the rest of the day. However, knowing how I value my privacy I suspect I hid the truth from all. I’m certain my mother would have raised a fit and my little brother would have exploited it. And so I did all I could to conceal my secret of my bare bottom with an uptight frigidness in the classroom, on the playground until I could finally make it back home to my room where I could find some panties to change into. Until then I endured a weird sort of suffering due partly from my own intense drama but also from a strange assumption or lack of knowledge that I could solve this problem in a more immediate way. Perhaps, since I was an older sister and probably was given responsibility early in age I felt it was my problem. So within the framework of my premature existence I kept it a secret and solved it the only way I knew how.

Of course, as an adult I don’t see it as my problem. It’s not the missing underwear that bothers me so but rather the missing love that could have made it all OK in the end. And it was OK in the end. At a very young age I knew how to love myself the way I am even though it was tough and not very efficient it was good enough for me. My love was the best thing I give myself to protect and nurture the very soul of my being.