A Brief Story

We had a family over for dinner whom we really like and want to get to know better. Their son is Little Squirt’s homie, and our lives overlap through school and church. It was a beautiful, balmy September evening, and we adults enjoyed sitting on our back deck while our sons and their tiny daughter ran around playing Super Heroes.

Later that night, after our friends had gone home, we got Little Squirt ready for bed. “That’s my friend’s underwear. He left it here." He pointed to crumpled Power Rangers briefs in a corner. Huh??? I just tried to roll with it. “What’s up with your homie’s undies?” But trying to get a straight answer out of Little Squirt is like trying to make sense out of Trigonometry. You simply cannot.

So I sent a text to the parents, telling them I had found their son’s underwear, in case they noticed it was missing from his body and were concerned, and I didn’t know the story, but I’d wash the briefs and return them, and all was well and it was no problem because people frequently leave their underwear at my home. No biggie. I wanted to be super casual and breezy about it all.

I saw the parents the next day at church, and we had a conversation about the skivvies. And they, too, found History Fact-Checking a bit nonsensical with their First Grader, because First Graders tell you nothing that makes any logical sense. (Unless they are First Grade Girls, and then they tell you everything in complete detail 24 hours a day until you want to plug up your ears and yell, “Please stop talking!!” I know this because I proudly parent both genders.)

But, when we put our collective four adult heads together to puzzle out why their son’s drawers were found in Little Squirt’s bedroom, we came to this conclusion: They had been playing Super Heroes. And Little Squirt had loaned his friend a Spiderman suit. And Spiderman was never seen with panty lines.