Brief struggle for down under

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/04/2016 (3488 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I don’t wish to brag, but when I was a young man, I really looked forward to putting on my underpants.

Back when I was in my 20s and 30s, I had roughly the same flexibility and dexterity as one of those high-flying Chinese acrobats you sometimes see on TV, and getting into my tighty whities was a piece of cake.

Without going into too much detail, my system in those days involved clutching my underpants tightly in both hands, holding them around waist height, then literally jumping into the air and, assuming my timing was perfect, landing with both legs aligned in the appropriate holes of my stretchy briefs, which I would then deftly snug up around my enviably trim waist.

Yes, occasionally things went horribly wrong but for the most part I managed to land safely inside my underpants like an Olympic gymnast sticking the landing after flipping through the air in the pommel horse event.

You probably think I am joking about this death-defying system for putting on undies, so I am going to take a moment here to ask my wife to corroborate my story.

Doug’s wife: “As ridiculous as it sounds, Doug is not lying about the way he used to get into his underpants. I’m amazed he never broke one of his legs.”

The point I am trying to make today is I really miss those days, because what with being an overweight, middle-aged newspaper columnist, climbing into a fresh pair of underpants in the morning has become far more challenging than I’d like to admit.

The thing is, I now have the same flexibility as a garden hose left outside all winter, which means putting on a pair of socks or my lucky underpants involves a tragic struggle wherein I have to sit on the edge of the bed, focus my breathing, then quickly bend over and try to pull on the aforementioned items of clothing, which I have carefully laid out on the floor.

As you can imagine, it is not a pretty sight to behold but somehow I manage to pull it off every morning. Or at least I did until the other day, when one of our dogs decided to turn the underpants ritual into a canine battle for dominance.

Surprisingly, I am not referring here to our wiener dog, Zoe, who has a long history of sneaking into our bedroom, stealing underwear and socks, then carrying them to her kennel, where she perches like a dragon guarding its treasure atop a mountain of stinky undergarments.

No, I am referring to our secondary dog, Mr. X, a small white dog with a brain the size of a cashew and a Napoleon complex larger than Donald Trump’s ego.

The thing is, Mr. X has never shown the slightest interest in my underpants until the other morning, when he strutted into our bedroom while I was struggling to get dressed.

There I was, sitting on the bed, trying to reach my feet, huffing and puffing like a steam engine, when Mr. X sidled over and gingerly took one of my sock-clad feet in his mouth.

“What the (bad word) do you think you’re doing?” is what I asked our dog, who is about as menacing as a cotton swab crossed with a throw pillow.

“Grrrrr!” Mr. X replied, his beady eyes locked on mine.

Before I could reply, the feisty little mutt let go of my foot and used his tiny but powerful jaws to latch onto the business end of my underpants, which were sort of puddled around my ankles.

I tried to reason with him.

“LET GO OF MY (VERY BAD WORD) UNDERPANTS!!!” I shrieked in what I hoped was the sort of commanding voice that would let my pet know who was pack leader in our house.

“GRRRRRR!!!” Mr. X replied with surprising tenacity.

If there had been a hidden camera in our bedroom — and I am extremely pleased there wasn’t — you would have seen a 295-pound man and a 15-pound dog engaged in a life-or-death battle of tug-of-war over a pair of slightly tattered men’s briefs.

Eventually, I hit on the clever tactic of simply letting go to see what would happen. At which point Mr. X, to celebrate his surprise victory, bolted from the bedroom with the underpants dangling from his jaws.

Sporting only socks, I bravely gave chase, slipping and sliding on the hardwood floor as I rounded a corner and… came face to face with my wife, She Who Must Not Be Named.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, her eyes boring into me like laser beams.

I pointed at Mr. X, who was sitting in his dog bed gnawing contentedly on my shorts. “I was trying to put my underwear on, but HE stole them!” I said, accusingly.

I’d like to tell you my wife was sympathetic and supportive, but that would be a lie. “You’re NOT the man I married,” she sniffed sadly before marching away.

Which I’m pretty sure was the point I was trying to make at the beginning of this column.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca