Throughout my childhood, there were numerous puzzling bits
of advice fed to me by parents, grandparents, and elders in general. And while I eventually understood the
rationale behind ones like “don’t lick rocks”, “don’t eat snow off of metal
surfaces in winter” and “for frick’s sake stop shoving marbles up your nose!!” (I wish you would have told me THAT one sooner Mom and Dad, I still have big hippo nostrils),
there are a few that, even today, stump me.
Perhaps the one of the most puzzling bits of advice I ever
received was this: “Always wear clean underwear, just in case you get hit by a
bus.”
I can’t be the only young child who was confused by
this. I could understand loads of
reasons to wear clean underwear, but the possibility of getting hit by a bus
was never one of them. Especially seeing
as I lived on a farm 3 miles outside of a hamlet with a population of about
300. Getting hit by a moose or tractor
seemed more likely.
Was there some sort of secret bus-repelling power that clean
underwear possessed? Could I walk into the street in front of one of those
enormous, exhaust-spewing monsters only to have it bounce off of me and my
super-clean, flowered, little-girl panties? Maybe I could be like one of those
super-heroes in cartoons, bouncing speeding buses off my hips to save puppies
and little old ladies in the street, as I triumphantly shout “Hahaha! Buses
cannot defeat me! Not with my super-hygienic undergarments! Hahaha!”
Really, when you tell children things like that, can you be
so surprised when they believe superman underwear gives them powers of flight,
and they leap off of their top bunks full of confidence and enthusiasm?
Even after I was old enough to reason that it was unlikely
that my favourite pair of purple panties could save me from becoming a smear on
the sidewalk, I still didn’t understand this strange directive. If you got hit by a bus, wouldn’t trying to
remember if you put on a clean pair of tightey-whiteys that morning be the
least of your worries? I eventually
stopped worrying about it and decided it would all be explained in the secret
handbook that I was told you mysteriously receive when you have a kid.
And while I’m not about to step in front of a bus anytime
soon…
I MAY perhaps have been doing superhero poses in the mirror
this morning in the new matched lace set I bought last week.
Sue me.
Ever since I was a teenage girl, all you would have said was, "Shave your legs, you never know when you might get hit by a bus." Just think of the embarassment of a hot EMT cutting of your jeans and POOF, gorilla legs. Ewwww...
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