I carry the clothes I plan to wear on any given work day with me in my awesome panniers. I leave shoes and several pairs of pants at work, but I carry undies, socks and shirt with me each day. The panniers are just big enough to bring all the pants and my towel and stuff home on Fridays for a wash. It is a system that is working really well for me. Most of the time.
Because every morning is a mad rush, I usually grab these items from piles of recently folded and sorted but not yet put away laundry. This level of disorganization can result in my arriving at work with my son's clothing instead of my own. One day last week I unpacked my things to get changed and found that the pair of socks that looked OK rolled up actually belonged to my 8 year old son. The sock below has been pre-stretched by my putting it on before having the idea for this post. I then removed it and took this picture with my cycling shoe, to give you an idea of its size relative to my foot:
They were quite big for little guy socks, and pretty stretchy, so rather than wear the white sport socks I cycled in with black work shoes, I just stuffed my feet into them anyway. This resulted in somewhat comical ankle socks:
I still think this is better than the dreaded white socks with black shoes look (if you wear white socks with everything, my apologies; keep your own style goin' there, friend). Also please note that I wear long pants at work, so I wasn't laying any of that skin action on my co-workers. This was not the first time I had accidentally brought kid stuff instead of my stuff. When underpants are just lying in an unfolded pile (folding undies is madness, in my opinion), a pair of boy's jockeys look an awful lot like a pair of men's jockeys. Since I did a "scale comparison" with the sock, here's one with underpants!
I chose a pair of cycling shorts because believe it or not, I draw the line at posting pictures of my undies; although it would seem posting pictures of my son's jockeys doesn't bother me at all. It kind of makes sense; little boy undies can be seen as "cute"... something quite impossible for grown man underpants, I'm sure you'll agree.
Some of you may already know something about the size of my butt, so you'll understand when I say that there was no way I could pull anything like the preceding sock trick with these little suckers. Have you ever gone commando at work? I have. I didn't like it, not one little bit.
I will try to write about something more normal and less disturbingly personal next time. Please come back. I'll be normal, I promise!
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