Howard reluctantly doffed his pants and pulled the briefs up his skinny legs. The last time he had worn briefs was when he was in eighth grade. The first year of high school he had graduated to boxers and had worn them ever since. As far as Howard was concerned, briefs were only worn by boys and Italian gigolos. Real men wore boxers. There was something about cotton briefs that was too reminiscent of padded training pants for Howard to feel comfortable wearing them. Somehow they had the emotional connotation of being the type of underwear that a male who couldn’t control himself wore. The nylon briefs favored by Italian lovers were only slightly less damning than cotton. If Howard had worn them, he would have felt like a male prostitute. The minute he had been allowed to choose his own clothes he had made a conscious decision never to wear briefs again. His hatred of cotton briefs extended to the fabric itself. He had endured polyester/cotton blends while he was in college, but once he finished graduated school and had gotten his first job, he gone out and bought silk boxers. Howard had worn nothing but silk next to his crotch from that day forward. Unfortunately, the small size of his rejuvenated body made wearing cotton briefs inevitable no matter how they made him feel. There was nothing else available.
Anita was emptying his underwear drawer as he dressed and stacking his boxers on the bed. Howard looked at the vestiges of his adult undergarments with an intense feeling of nostalgia as she cleaned out the drawer. When she had finished taking out all of his socks and piling them on the bed, she took the two briefs from the package and laid them in his underwear drawer by themselves. Just as he reached for his pants, she grabbed them from the bed and said, “Not so fast, buster! You wore these without underwear, remember? I’m going to put them in the wash right now!”
Howard dropped his mouth open at the tone in her voice. What had possessed her to talk that way to him? He wore the pants in the family! How dare she! First the cigar in the car, then the briefs and now this! What the Hell was wrong with her? Had she lost her mind?