My 5-year-old son went off to kindergarten without his underpants today. Here’s how it happened. He dressed himself. He likes to dress himself. We pick out his clothes the night before, and in the morning, I lay those clothes out on his bed and he gets dressed. Unsupervised. He usually does a great job. He’s very independent and has always been independent. He was an early talker and one of his first sentences was, ‘I do it my own self’. He is also very hung up on his hair. He spends several minutes a morning combing, wetting and re-combing his mop top. Then he smiles his, ‘I look good’ smile at himself in the mirror and he’s done. Then he runs into his playroom to line up his transformers for battle that will ensure after school. This morning, the routine held, all seem right in our little world at 7am.
Off we go to school, and we arrive early. The playground supervisor, Linda, hasn’t even opened the gate yet. So I jokingly say that we must have forgotten to do something, otherwise how could we be this early for school.
“What? you forgot my lunch, again?” My son asks in that resigned voice that only a 5-year-old can lay on you. It made me realize that he might be thinking his mom is going to turn out to be ‘that’ mom. The one who’s always forgetting something important or running through the parking lot with her kid dragging behind, trying to beat the bell every morning. Well, don’t get me wrong, I sympathize with that mom. I see how easy I have it. I don’t have to scramble around in the morning to get myself and a child together by 7.30am. I don’t have to rush off to work. I remind him that we are always early, and I’ve only forgotten his lunch once.
“So what did we forget?” He asks, sweetly now.
I tease him. “You have a shirt on don’t you?” He touches his chest and looks down. “And pants?” He pulls at his shorts and smiles. “And underpants?” I knew this would make him giggle. The word underpants seems to make all 5-year-old kids giggle. He giggled. He reached down and looked in to his shorts. His face registered shock. “I forgot my underpants.”
I catch my breath and feel my armpits fill with sweat. “You’re teasing me.” I say hopefully.
“No. See”. He pulls down his shorts enough to show me his little nakedness and indeed, there are no underpants on my child. “You can bring them to the office and Teacher Beth will get them for me.” My son says helpfully. No. no, I can’t bring your underpants to the office and ask a teacher to get them for you, I think to myself and I sweat in the driver’s seat trying to decide what to do. Is this bad? Is this okay? Is this just a funny omission or a terrible mistake?
“Just don’t tell anyone you forgot your underpants today, okay?”
“Okay, mommy. Don’t worry.”
“And don’t forget to wear underpants again.”
“Okay, mommy. Look, kids are going in. Hurry up! I want to get a swing,” my kid yells and starts pushing on the car door.
I think for one last minute at the possible outcome of child in school without underpants. I decide it’s no big deal. I can stop sweating, and make a note to myself to remember underpants for my kid and antiperspirant for myself every morning from now on.
One more note about underpants. For about 3 months now, I have been finding my son’s underpants under my pillow. He thinks it is hysterical to hide his underpants in my bed every night. I think I should be sweating this one, but I’m not because he’s 5. If he’s still doing it at 15, I’ll be sweating bullets.
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