Free underwear is great, but what I really need is a ride to the mall

I had no idea my underwear problem would hold such interest for Reality Check readers. To be honest, I only wrote about my lack of viable “unmentionables” because, when I sat down to write this column a couple weeks back, I couldn’t think of anything better.

In that column, I admitted I do not currently have a girlfriend, mother or wife to buy my underwear and, as a result, my boxers and briefs are slowly disintegrating. I further allowed that, sure, I COULD buy my own, but doing so would be to admit I no longer believe I will ever HAVE another wife or girlfriend, and I’m just not ready to do that.

So — as I confessed in that column — I decided to continue wearing the tattered remnants of my formerly pristine BVDs until the health department issues some sort of injunction against me.

Now, I don’t know whether it’s just because it’s the Christmas season, but Reality Check readers came to the rescue big time. As of yesterday, I have received three separate deliveries of underwear, all to my home address. I find this both touching and a little bit creepy.

First off, where did you underwear-senders get my home address? I mean, I know we live in the internet age where nothing is secret, and I don’t exactly go out of my way to keep my private life private (I write about my underwear, after all) but still…

The worst part, though, was that as thoughtful as I found the gifts to be, all three senders were far too kind in their assessment of my posterior girth. To purchase underwear that fits me correctly, one must first envision a manatee clad in Fruit of the Loom whitey-tighties. This is a good starting point.

The skimpy briefs I received in the mail I will forward to Brad Pitt or Woody Allen, so they don’t go to waste. The Spiderman Underoos, however … I’m keeping those, since I’m pretty sure they were meant as a joke. Eventually, I’ll have another six-year-old grandson and they’ll make a nice birthday present.

Yet another reader — who by request will remain anonymous — suggested I try a company called Duluth Trading Company for my undergarment needs. I checked them out and at first thought they were a bit expensive. Then I took a look at the briefs being sold at our local big box stores; it turns out underwear is pricey no matter where you buy them.

Now I remember why I never purchased my own, why wives or girlfriends were always tagged to tackle the chore. I like buying “fun” stuff, like DVDs and new cell phones; underwear is too boring to waste money on.

I’m not complaining, though, really. I can go without. I’ve always considered underwear a bit superfluous; I’ve been told by ex-wives who should know that I’m something of a guerrilla. Or maybe they meant gorilla; with my back-hair issue, it’s anyone’s guess.

At any rate, folks, please stop worrying about my underwear situation. I’m sorry I brought it up. Whatever life throws my way, I’ll find a means to muddle through.

Instead, since so many of you seem to be in a giving mood, let’s talk about my crappy car. The front end’s ready to drop off, I broke the muffler on a snow bank the other day, and the left headlight switches on and off at random.

I’m not dropping any hints here, but I live in the brown house on Baldwin Lake and I’m partial to Mercedes.

Mike Taylor’s book — the perfect last-minute Christmas present! — is available at Robbins Book List in downtown Greenville. Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Life: a long Madison Avenue stroll with a boom on either end

I entered this world on the tail end of the baby boom, the last of a generation of children spawned by parents who felt no house was happy unless filled to bursting with the pitter-patter of breaking dishes and screams of, “Moooom! Mike’s pickin’ on me again!!”

Being part of this “bulge” of humanity has always been a mixed blessing. On the downside, few of us ever got to experience the exclusive parental attention afforded sibling-free children. On the upside, for as long as I can remember, Madison Avenue advertising has been directed toward me, me, me! Or, rather, my generation.

This has led we baby boomers to believe the world revolves around us. And indeed, for the past 50 years or so, it has.

In my teens, every advertiser wanted to appear youthful and “groovy.” I was part of the Pepsi Generation, I taught the world to sing while drinking Coke, I ate Rice-a-Roni because it came from San Francisco, where all the gentle people wore flowers in their hair.

As I was dragged kicking and screaming into adulthood, advertisers followed right along. Now it seemed the world catered to young parents, like me, who were looking for ways to “have it all” — work, family, friends. When those rednecks in the Budweiser commercial kicked back after a day of hunting Bambi, popped a cold one and said, “Boys, it don’t get no better’n this!” I believed them.

Fast forward another decade or two. Madison Avenue now was concerned about my investment portfolio (which, in my case consisted of an envelope in my sock drawer with 11 bucks in it). But for just pennies a day — the price of a donut and a cup of coffee — I could get insurance that would guarantee my family a luxurious, high on the hog lifestyle once I died.

I bought the donut and coffee instead. Still, it was comforting to know advertisers were still chasing after my business.

But if I thought advertisers were targeting me up until then, Al Gore’s invention of the Internet showed me I hadn’t seen anything yet. Suddenly, if I bought a box of crackers online, every cracker manufacturer from here to Beijing knew about it and flooded my in-box with offers of better, crisper, more flavorful crackers.

I didn’t mind. I like crackers and I’m always looking for a deal. So when the advertising became even more intrusive, I was still mostly cool with it.

If I bought a new cell phone case on Amazon, all my Facebook ads for two weeks featured other cell phone cases. By electronically eyeballing my every keystroke, advertisers now knew everything about me; my birthday, my shoe size, my tastes in art, food, beer, women. For the first time in history, they knew exactly what to offer me.

A lot of folks consider this an invasion of privacy, but not me. I LIKED having my advertising tailored to my specific tastes.

For a while.

At this very moment, the “ad strip” going down the right side of my Facebook screen features offers for cell phones, electric hand dryers (I considered buying one a couple months back, and they will not forget this), Airsoft guns from Target, and four different opportunities to contact impossibly beautiful, yet somehow desperate and insanely amorous girls who are “into” older men. They mean me. I’m the “older man.”

I accept even this. What I’m having a hard time accepting is the advertisement that quietly insinuated itself into the bottom of my ad strip yesterday afternoon: adult … wait for it … diapers. That’s right. Diapers.

Suddenly, having advertising tailored the Internet’s perception of what I “need” no longer seems like such a great idea. What’s next? Denture cream? Heating pads? Bursitis cream? I don’t even know what bursitis IS, for crying out loud! Get off my screen!

If I wanted to be constantly reminded of how old I’m getting, I would have stayed married to my last wife!

Sigh. In just under 60 years, I’ve somehow gone from baby boom to geezer boom. On either end of the spectrum, diapers, apparently, figure prominently.

And speaking of advertising, here’s one targeted right at you: Mike Taylor’s book — the perfect last-minute Christmas present! — is available at Robbins Book List in downtown Greenville and on AMAZON.COM.

All I want for Christmas is new underwear. Or a girlfriend

My Christmas wish list has changed radically in the past 30 years.

As a boy, I wanted the stuff all boys want — robots, b.b. guns, chemistry sets, erector kits, slot cars, model railroads. Fun stuff.

As I grew older, toys gave way to record albums (in the pre-mp3 era), art supplies, musical instruments, basketballs and books. Not as fun as slot cars and robots, but what is?

Then I grew up, which I suspected, even at the time, was not a smart move. The Christmas gifts grew increasingly lame; Dayglo Three Stooges neckties from my children, shirts too flamboyant even for Michael Jackson from my sainted Irish mother, gift certificates to Friday’s from relatives who no longer knew me well enough to have any idea what I really like.

And that was just middle age. By the time I passed middle age (which I have done, unless I plan to live to well past 100*) the gifts got even worse, because they were purchased by a practical wife or girlfriend (never both at once).

My last wife, The (Former) Lovely Mrs. Taylor, was a pretty good gift buyer; she once bought me a super cool robot I still play with whenever I remember to purchase the 20 D-cell batteries that bring the thing to life. But she also gave me socks and underwear.

Granted, that underwear was often inspired by some studly male model from the pages of her glamour magazines rather than by anything I might actually need. She was no doubt disappointed to see me exit the bathroom each morning looking nothing at all like Fabio, dressed in something more akin to a slingshot than an undergarment. Maybe that’s why she left me; I’ll never know for sure. 

Sweet Annie came along just as my old socks and underwear were reaching the point of semi-transparency. Our first Christmas together she bought me more of both. This trend continued on a more or less annual basis for a few years. Blessedly, Annie was more realistic about my physique; she purchased underwear that actually covered parts of my anatomy best left to the imagination. (Which, if I am to be completely honest, would be a task best served these days by a large tarp of some sort.)

Having non-threadbare underwear was great, but alas, that was not enough to hold the relationship together. So for the past several months, I’ve been without a girlfriend, wife, significant other, life partner … all I’ve got is my cat, Friday Magoo, and he shows no signs of caring about my underwear predicament.

I’m getting used to being single, but something really must be done about this whitey-tighty crisis. I realize now that I have grown entirely reliant on women for my “foundation garment” needs; I have never, in my entire life, purchased a package of BVDs or Haines. Never!

It’s not that I’m cheap; it’s just, well, I hate buying “practical” stuff. It seems a waste of money when there are so many robots and b.b. guns (and their adult equivalents) available for purchase virtually everywhere. But like I said, my undergarment problem is getting serious.

So. I have a choice: Buy my own briefs and sweat socks, or find a girlfriend. It’s easier to just shop for new underwear, sure, but that just feels like giving up. 

So I guess I’ll give it another month or so, maybe join an online dating site or attend one of those Friday night singles dances over at the VFW. If I can’t find a woman willing to gift me a pack of Haines by Christmas, I’ll take that as a sign my days of wine and roses are past and I’ll make the long, lonely drive to Walmart.

* I do.

Mike Taylor’s book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is available at Robbins Book List in Greenville and in Kindle format from Amazon.com. More online at mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com.

It’s a fact; I may be the smartest man in the world

There may be chimps smarter than me, but among Homo sapiens sapiens, I — with the possible exception of Robin Williams — may be the most intelligent man alive.

Those of you who know me personally are no doubt shocked by this assertion, but lemme tell ya, buddy, this time science is on my side. I know the science is legit because I saw it on Facebook, that final arbiter of all that is unassailably accurate and truthful in the world.

I get a lot of my facts from Facebook:

• Republicans are evil. So are Democrats.

• The president is a space alien.

• I can lose belly fat using this one simple trick doctors hate!

• Hundreds of beautiful women are just waiting for me to chat with them online.

• Those same women don’t care that I’m twice their age; they like it, in fact.

• Elvis shot JFK.

This is just a small sampling, of course. There are plenty more facts where those came from.

But the fact I’m choosing to believe today, the one that pretty much proves I’m the smartest man alive (except for Robin Williams) is this: excessive body hair has been linked to higher I.Q.

According to Dr. Aikarakudy Alias — a psychiatrist with a name that might cause a person less intelligent than myself to doubt the validity of his claim — men with more body hair are just smarter than the rest of the population. Alias has been studying the relationship between body hair and I.Q. for 22 years and recently shared his findings with the eighth Congress of the Association of European Psychiatrists, an organization I’m almost sure is not fictional.

Alias reported that hairy chests are “…more likely to be found amongst doctors and the highly educated than in the general population.” While 45 percent of male doctors in training resemble extras in the movie “Planet of the Apes,” Alias says, only 10 percent of working stiffs can boast such hirsute wonderfulness.

If this is true — and I’m choosing to believe it is — then the fur on my back alone should land me a job with NASA. Add to that my shoulder toupees and the shrubbery that continually attempts to sprout from my ears and you’re looking at the next Einstein here, folks.

It’s a shame I’m finding this out so late in life. If I had spent the last 30 years just letting my hair grow, I’d probably have tenure at M.I.T. by now. Instead, I’ve made regular attempts to trim my fur back to a length that will not frighten children at the beach or cause me to show up in blurry “Bigfoot” footage shot by terrified campers.

I assume it’s a Samson type thing. The longer my hair gets, the smarter I’ll be. Of course, I’m single and being covered with a bear-like pelt could conceivably hurt my chances with the ladies. Happily, there’s a website filled with beautiful Asian girls just waiting for a chance to meet up with hairy men like me — well, according to Facebook.

Contact Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.