While clearing off the table after Easter dinner with my family Aunt Lola suddenly stopped halfway to the sink. “My worst nightmare,” she announced, “it DONE COME TRUE!”
There was a lot of commotion in the room, twins with eerily real-looking toy guns running around the room shooting at the walls, my seven-year-old nephew prancing around the kitchen in nothing but a pair of tight blue underwear. Ignoring the shoot-out going on around her my sister yelled across the room to her almost nude third child, “SON. You are too old to be walking around in your undies.”
He just stared back at her, grunted and said, “Nuh, uh.”
Lola, not one to ever be out done, continued, “All my life I’ve had these dreams where I leave the house and I don’t have no underwear on. And I wake up all mad and terrified, cuz you know, I ain’t got no underwear on.”
I had to ask, if only to be nice because that’s exactly what she wanted me to do, ask, so I did, “You mean you’re not wearing any underwear?”
“NO!” She screamed. “I’M NOT! I done forgot to put any on when I got dressed this morning. And I’m so uncomfortable right now I could spit!”
Oh sacred and Holy Day of the Lord. Jesus is risen and Lola ain’t wearing no panties.