At least I didn't throw my bra. That's the good part, right?

The last time my mother came to my house, she wanted to talk again about the bitchy enchilada and I had had enough to drink that I was receptive to a night of rehashed family drama; the next thing I knew I was making up the spare bed for her. In the morning, she asked if she could borrow a pair of underwear. (If you like the word panties just go away. It’s underwear.)

I have no problem loaning underwear, but:

a) I don’t ever want it back

b) after you’ve borrowed it, I don’t want you to tell me how comfortable/soft/nice it is because then I will have to picture you in it and that would probably make me vomit

I thought my mother knew about a & b.

Alas.

There I was at the pediatrician’s this morning, listening as he explained that Junior does not have Fifth Disease, he has a fixed drug eruption. You have to understand, after the “doctors” we've seen, I was so very grateful for an informed diagnosis. I said “thank you” a million times. I mean, Jesus, I was one knuckle short of giving him a hand job when I reached into the diaper bag for something to wipe Junior’s nose with and pulled out...

...pale blue bikini underwear.

Which I unraveled and looked at questioningly before realizing what the hell they were.

Pale blue bikini underwear.

Do you know what he said? “Mrs. Mullet, this isn’t a rock concert.”

Looking back on it (oh shut up, you'd look back too), it was probably the most appropriate thing he could have said.

When I got home I called my mother. She told me that after washing the underwear she stuffed it into the bag most conveniently located to her purse—which just happened to be Junior’s diaper bag—when she and I met at my grandmother’s.

I hung up after she snorted.

If you’re a doctor and you’d like to know more about Fifth Disease because you keep misdiagnosing children whose parents are an absolute wreck about the health and welfare of their child, click here. If you can’t keep track of your underwear, click here, you’re home.