A Girl's Gotta Wear Clean Underwear

It was nearly a decade ago when I lived in a campus residence hall, aka dormitory.  It had everything a student needed: bathrooms, laundry rooms, lounges, a dining hall, even a pool table in the basement rec room.  It was in this humble antiquated abode that an unforgettable memory was created.  This memory haunts me every few months when I reconnect with a college buddy; a memory that, thanks to the persistent reminders from Jay-Awr, members of our posse have permanently etched into their minds like an ugly tattoo from days long ago.

Living off of my own savings from that summer's stint at Baskin Robbins, I was uber careful with my scrappy pot of change in my checking account.  When it came time to do a load of laundry, I made sure it was a full load.  Even when I was desperate...like when I ran out of clean underwear that one fateful night.

By the time I noticed, it was late, I didn't want to do an entire load of laundry, and I couldn't fathom going commando the next day.  So I selected a few pieces of dirty underwear, grabbed my bottle of detergent from my closet, and headed to the bathroom.  I proceeded to wash my panties in one of the three communal porcelain sinks.  Most people were sleeping since it was so late at night so I wasn't in danger of bumping into any girls.  Silly me: I neglected to account for the boys in our hall.

My heart nearly jumped out of my chest when Jay-Awr suddenly swung open the door and caught me hunched over the sink.  He was on a search for a female hall mate and unable to locate her in conventional locations like her dorm room, he took it upon himself to check the ladies' room himself.  With his arm propping the door wide open, he gave me a perplexed look and straddled his legs, one anchored on the tiled floor of the bathroom and the other on the linoleum tiles of the hallway.  I looked up, explained what I was doing thinking nothing of it, and after a brief moment of silence, my RA burst into howling fits of laughter.

(It's a good thing he didn't walk in on the foreign Italian student who thought it perfectly normal to wash her face TOPLESS in that same bathroom.)

And here we are, almost ten years later, retelling the story over nice creamy bowls of Rice to Riches rice pudding during Jay-Awr's most recent visit on New Year's Eve 2007.