The Family Jewels

I was sitting here yesterday in all my mother's dailiness glorihoodification or whatever that was yesterday when Squib came running in from the bathroom in his t-shirt and underwear and lifted up the shirt to show me the underwear, did an uncanny pelvic...something...and said, "LOOK!"

"It glows!!!"

And, by golly, he was right. And that has to be wrong in more ways than I can express.

He dragged me into the darkest room we have, the bathroom, to show me the latest development in children's Spiderman underpants which is that--right where the jewels are so-to-speak--is a giant glow-in-the-dark spider.

It was a credit to exactly how hideously my noggin felt that I just stood there with bugged out eyes listening to him say, "Isn't-that-cool-mom-the-spider-glows-green-in-the-dark-I-love-these-underwear-they-are-my-favoritist-underwear-ever-I-am-never-taking-them-off-I-need-to-go-show-everybody-they-GLOW!!!"

The "go show everybody" part woke me up and I was about to slow him down because I know the humor of "everybody" and they needed fair warning about the ensuing spider jewel-marker pants lest they lose it completely or be horrified out of their socks. (That covers both factions of the "Big Red House" as Squib calls it, I think).

Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your viewpoint right now), fate intervened and Squib tripped over some...air, I guess...and need some consolation and time on his beanbag chair and some "memmalade" which I was out of...so I went to the Big Red House to borrow some. And while there I told Buddy about the glowing spider pants.

And was almost single-handedly responsible for his death due to hysterics.

Baba got the wicked wolf spider warning as well and was...amazed? Or horrified. I don't know. It was hard to tell. Having come from the era of whitey tighties I can only imagine her response to airbrushed undies with well-placed glow-in-the-dark...things...on them.

And about that time was when the Squiblet arrived to show off the spider. I can't even write this without it sounding bad. I tried "his spider," "the spider" and several permutations thereof and...all that's happening here is I'm losing ground faster than I start.

It doesn't help that someone told him that maybe if the pants were exposed to more light, they might glow better in the dark (there was some field testing). So he sat here in my office with a flashlight aimed at them and ran back and forth from the bathroom obsessively to "check on the spider."

Since he wore them home to his dad's I'm hoping that's the last of that particular pair and with any luck at all I can rotate all the Spiderman glow underwear home to daddy's where perhaps a saner head can prevail, but usually my luck isn't that good. I don't know what possessed the Fruit of the Loom people to put their glow-in-the-dark stuff exactly where they did, but they have certainly created some hilarity around here.

There's a lot more real estate on the rear end, why not there? Had there been a glowing spider on his bottom I'd not have had an issue....

...nor half the fun.

Scat.
(and NO there will NOT be any pictures of the glow underwear so don't even ask)