Since my husband was diagnosed as Asperger's, I've been exploring new Thinking and old thinking, true thinking and untrue thinking.  Ethical dilemmas about Underwear falls under the category of old thoughts.  I'm going to write about it. 

 

It's fun to buy new underwear.  New underwear holds so much promise.  It's fresh.  It's bright.  It fits better.  Sometimes it's sexy so that when you walk from your bureau to your bathroom wearing just your underwear, your husband grunts at you when you cross in front of the television.

 

My old underwear was still in good shape but it was falling off my behind. This is part of my ethical dilemma and old thinking...spending perfectly good money on new underwear when the old underwear hasn't worn itself so thin that you could tell if I was circumcised or not.

 

That joke doesn't work because I'm a girl.  I haven't got a better one so you'll just have to stay with that imagery.  Let me know when you're finished.

 

The second part is after I've decided to buy underwear that will stay on my body, I hesitate to throw away the old underwear, because there might be a perfectly good use for all that cotton knit.

 

I want to emphasize right here and now that my old underwear did indeed end up in the trash.  New thinking eventually won out.  All my old underwear went right into the trash.  After I washed them.  Because you never know where your underwear is going to end up once you've thrown it away so they might as well be clean.

 

Old thinking...that's the thinking I had when my hoarding Grandma was still alive, when I was growing up on the farm, when I was a dirt poor newly married mother in college.  The thinking that you use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. 

That platitude is fine and dandy when it comes to a lot of things.  There are some days of the month that it's way better to wear your old saggy underwear than to do without.  But making do or wearing something out has it's limits in polite society.   There are never days where it's better to figure out how to crochet a rag rug for your mud room out of strips of past due granny panties.

 

Yes, that is where my old thinking took me.  It's fun to recycle!

 

When my new underwear gets old, I'm looking forward to deciding against crafting with them.