Catastrophe blew through our home, today: my teenage daughter caught me single-handed...wearing her red lace thong panties.  It doesn’t seem to matter that I absent-mindedly thought the fancy panties were my own (regardless of my accrued wisdom/pre-senioritis), she refuses to believe me.

 “What are you doing, wearing my panties?!?”  Her looks alone could shrivel one to the size of a prune.

“It was a mistake.  Honestly.”  We climb into her car and her continued facial expressions tell me she’s never going to forgive me for this—ever.

“Do you also have my blue panties, the exact same style, in blue?”  Hayley angrily shoots at me.

“No.”  She looks away, the “Urman sigh” a clear part of her body language.  I wonder if she’ll forgive me in our lifetime, together.  The guilt begins surging through me (teenagers have a pretty amazing way of enticing this); then I realize, wait a second, here...as a trim and fit mom we often trade clothes.  We’re both unconventional and our tastes run similar.  Okay, so I’m a tad bit larger than she is (not by first glance, though) and there are such thingys as washing machines (and at the very least, sinks, to hand wash certain delicate articles of clothing).  What the heck is she thinking?  That I’ve got some godawful scent that she’ll never be able to clean out?  That I’ve stretched her panties three sizes too large, that now they’ll only fit our 300 lb. neighbor?  Part of me wants to rip off the panties, while driving (toss them out of the open window?), just to avert her slaying, slit-eyed hoodoo stare.  And I shift uncomfortably in my seat, making me notice her red lace thong panties even more.

An hour later, after we sit through a Course in Miracles class (and smiling at one another during it), she gets all pissy, again, about something else.  I mention that we’ve just gone to the class and the idea is to do the work, not just read or hear about it.

“So?...what does that mean!”  Well...obviously nothing...to her.  When we get home, I decide to take the panties off, anyway.  I hand wash them in the sink.  I dry them over my shower glass door.  And the next day, I present them to her—clean, dry and freshly scented.  She barely notices, doesn’t say a word and I place them on her bed.  So much for yesterday’s panty angst.  May just as well have flung them out the window—at least it would have made me feel better for a few seconds.  But then again.....naaaaaah.