Those People in the Wrong Underpants

Damn you for not being more like me

by Dan Piraro

Midway through seventh grade, when I was thirteen, a kid from somewhere other than our town in Middle America enrolled in our school. He was from New York or New Jersey, judging by the sitcom quality of his accent.

As our class changed into our gym clothes on his first day, someone noticed he wore boxer-style underwear.

In my school, in that era, boys wore briefs, popularly known as “tighty-whiteys,” prompting us to ask:

Who was this freak, and what made him think he could get away with that shit?!

As predictably as snickering during a film about human reproduction, numerous kids ridiculed him mercilessly. (Not me, of course — I recall being an innocent observer of all childhood injustices.)

And, within a couple of days, he was wearing the correct style of underpants. That didn’t rectify his Welcome Back, Kotter accent, however, so he remained a pariah.

I can’t recall what happened to him after that first week; I had the rest of the seventh-grade student body to worry about, many of whom were girls with expanding chest bumps. I don’t recall seeing him in the eighth grade, so he may have been incarcerated or deported by then. But that’s not the point of this story.

There’s a lot of pressure in adolescence to “fit in.” But it doesn’t start or end there.

We humans just generally don’t trust people who are too much “not like us.” That’s why it is so easy to turn minorities into political footballs.

Even among our own clans, only minor differences are tolerated. If you’re too different, you risk becoming a target. (That theory was tested the first time I wore a dress and tiara to high school, but that’s a tale for another time.)

Meanwhile, consider that a little thing called planet Earth and the rest of the infinite universe are the complete opposite.

Everything in existence — including every human — is necessarily constructed of infinite variety, an eternity of differences without exception.

It is said that no two snowflakes are exactly alike (the frozen-water kind, not the anyone-who-demonstrates-compassion kind), but that rule also pertains to everything that has ever existed anywhere in the universe. Despite the Olsen twins’ impressive early efforts, even identical twins are not identical.

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Imagine a universe in which all celestial bodies are identical to Earth. There would be no life as we define it. Life needs heat, so it can’t exist without a star like our Sun, but in this imaginary version, the Sun is also like Earth, so it isn’t a heat source. End of the world; end of story.

Back to reality (if there is such a thing): Even our moon is necessary for life on Earth. It isn’t just a hole in the dome above our disk, as so many flat-earthers assume; it is essential to our existence. Without it, life on Earth would perish. Just ask a real scientist (not the kind that denies climate change or thinks homosexuality can be programmed out of a person).

The moon isn’t “one of us,” so to speak, but it does jobs native Earthlings don’t want to do, like stabilizing our life-sustaining orbit and lifting the tides.

Nature does not extinguish anything wearing the wrong underwear; it rewards differences and thrives on them. So why don’t we?

When we penalize differences, we are struggling against nature: swimming upstream, shoveling the sidewalk in a blizzard, decorating for a pool party during a hurricane.

Why do we put such violent emphasis on fitting in, being normal, following the crowd? Have humans always been this way? Sadly, yes.

(Full disclosure: I have a [self-awarded] PhD in evolutionary deconstructive theoretical analysis, and I wield it as sanctimoniously as any so-called “expert” on a right-wing propaganda news channel.)

In my (expert-adjacent) opinion, we distrust outliers because homo sapiens are pack animals. When we lived in the wild, anyone from outside our pack — or “tribe” — might not have been safe. They may have come to steal our animal skins or pee on our campfire, so we evolved to be suspicious of strangers.

Although nature provided endless variety, it was in our nature to trust only sameness. It’s another of life’s odd contradictions, like how the better something tastes, the more likely it is to kill you. (I’m looking at you, Reese’s Peanut Butter Swirl ice cream!)

So, when we discriminate against people who are not like us, we are simultaneously going with and against nature. We are pulling ourselves in two directions at once.

And what happens when something is pulled in two directions at once? (Ask anyone whose mother and wife don’t get along.)

Perhaps humans would benefit from examining which of our primitive instincts still serve us and which we should evolve beyond.

Like it or not, differences make things work.

Without the sun, what would warm us? Without the moon, what would lift the tides? Without the Earth, where would we stand while kicking our political footballs over our expensive border walls?

Some of us wear briefs, others wear boxers, and some prefer the underwear of the opposite sex. Are those with the “wrong” underwear going to steal our animal skins or want to use our public restrooms? God forbid!

And which god will forbid it? The god of boxers, briefs, or thongs?

And what of those who don’t believe in any particular god? Who will forbid their versions of the wrong underwear and persecute the infidels?

Maybe we should ask ourselves, how does what others do in the privacy of their own Levis affect my life?

Doesn’t it all seem like much ado over the wrong underpants?

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