Working with kids means I’m privy to an astounding amount of personal information. Kids don’t censor themselves, so I’m often informed about what was served for breakfast, how their Dad sounds when he is mad, who sleeps where, and what sort of underwear they wear.

For somebody who has only recently mastered toileting, underwear is exciting. Wearing it, keeping it dry, showing your friends which cartoon pictures are on it. It can be used as a greeting, like when someone flips up their skirt upon approaching a friend or teacher, and happily exclaims, “Look – Dora!”  It’s a way to define gender, even when what’s inside isn’t really evident. “He’s a boy. He gots Thomas underwear.” It can offer a bond and begin a friendship, like it did for two girls chatting while one pulled up her pants. Noticing the princess underpants one wore, the other said, “I like your undies! Wanna be friends?”

As kids move into an awareness of the bigger world, they’re less likely to flash their friends, and by four or five they’ve had the talk with their folks about privacy. Newly invested in keeping their boxers to themselves, an inadvertent sighting of underwear is a vehicle for hilarity. A kid just has to say underwear, and other kids fall into giggles. Similarly, whatever name you give to genitals sends kids into gales of laughter. Penis and vulva? Hahaha Pee? Poo? Butt? Heee hee hee….Stinky butt-butt??  Sometimes it’s impossible to redirect the conversation. A four year old joke doesn’t even need a punch line, and inserting any kind of bathroom talk makes it a surefire hit. Knock knock – who’s there? Underwear…(you don’t even have to say, underwear who?)…..they’re falling on the floor.

You might think my days are one big laugh after another, but like everything else in life you have to put in some time to glean the tiny rewards. My underwear awareness comes from entire lifetimes spent in bathrooms, propping kids on potties, waiting for them to go, coaching them through learning to wipe themselves – “You can do it…try again.!”

At our school the bathroom is down the hall from the classroom, so an adult always accompanies a kid. Most of the time it’s in and out, but there are plenty of opportunities for conversation as kids strip down, do their thing, then button up (or ask for help to) and wash their hands. Last year in class I had a child who liked to linger. As Stella sat on the toilet she swung her legs, sang sometimes, always involved me in conversation. She was a thoughtful kid, and always managed to look carefully at every experience - constantly asking questions and describing her observations.

Stella made an event out of every bathroom visit. She noticed how the soap squirted out into the shape of a snake, how she could turn on the faucet with one finger, how her hands could make a funnel around the stream of water before it fell into the drain. I always knew it would take a while, so I usually sat on the radiator to wait. One day after our usual dialogue, with Stella meandering and me asking, “Almost done yet?” she came out of the stall pulling up her pants. She stopped for a minute, pushed her pants back down, then reached inside to pull up her underwear first. She then pulled up her pants, and asked me to help her snap. While I pushed together the two ends of the snap, she commented, “Sometimes my underwear follows my jeans.” I’m still pondering the significance of her observation, but she seemed to understand that you just never know when things are going to work smoothly on their own, and when you’re going to have to reach in to help things along.

Sometimes now I think of my bathroom philosopher. She kept me thinking, and laughing, and I miss her fresh take on things. Another favorite quote of hers happened when Stella and another kid were wondering what it would be like if clothes could talk. Stella contributed, “If clothes could talk, pants would walk away.”

Yep, and if clothes could talk, underwear would be telling all the jokes.