STONE COLD HAVEN

For centuries, man has endeavoured to explain some of the mysteries of this here life of ours by resorting to the proverbial trinity of falsehoods – lies, damned lies and statistics. More recently, I remember my maths tutor in college suggesting that Statistics was a good major for those seeking to enter politics simply because you could use statistics to bullshit your way through anything.

I must admit, I have a fascination for statistical information often bandied around in the news media as they tell us something about how we live our lives. But it’s not often you come across a statistical claim that men on average, only purchase their own underwear for 17 years of their lives. This got me thinking. When was the last time I actually went out to buy new underwear? You know what, I honestly can’t remember.

Don’t get me wrong, my side of the dresser always has an abundance of neatly folded clean and fresh stock – but just like hangers that seem to be in every closet, I’ve never really taken time to think about where the new underwear came from or where the old ones were dispatched to. I guess ‘er indoors is due a monumental thank you for taking care of the finer detail in life.

Apparently, one of the biggest stores in the UK has done some research from the information they collect from their sales, and concluded that there’s credence in the notion that men in stable relationships probably have no clue how much underwear costs.

According to Debenhams, most men buy new underwear only if they are starting or about to start a relationship. The unfortunate chap whose job it was to extrapolate this info suggests:

“You can tell when a man is looking for a partner by the number of new underwear they buy. If he buys more than 31 pairs every year, he’s either still trying desperately to impress the woman in his life – or else she’s not The One”.

“This is the one issue that feminism has never addressed. It’s not who wears the pants in each household – it’s who has to buy them that counts”.

They further suggest that men’s underwear buying activity reaches a peak at the age of 23, but declines gradually until the age of 33 when it falls to zero – because many men are in a stable relationship. It picks up again between the ages of 38 and 40, when some men are going through relationship break ups and are seeking new partners again.

But it goes into a sharp decline again and slumps to zero at the age of 44 when they are generally in another stable relationship. After the age of 44 men remain strangers to the underwear department for the rest of their lives, handing all responsibility for their underwear to women.

You know, after reading this stuff, I made a point of asking ‘er indoors how much underwear costs these days and she laughed me out of the room. She was curious to know what brought this on since I’ve never bothered asking her something like this. I admit that I still don’t know how much bread, let alone underwear costs, but I guess each time I pick up a new pair from the drawer, I best be thankful for the small comforts in life. I did entertain the thought of getting in touch with all my ex’s just to thank them for this studious duty of seamlessly ensuring my dignity – but I guess this blog post will have to do.

After all, we have to relentlessly adhere to the old maxim of how important it is to wear clean underwear at every available opportunity. I doubt this has anything to do with personal hygiene….nothing like that. It’s primarily because we all owe our loved ones some dignity in case something tragic was to happen to us – say if we absent mindedly walked under a bus and ended up on a slab in an unsavoury backroom in the local mortuary.

Can you imagine your folks claiming your personal effects only to be handed dodgy underwear with skid marks? The poor folks have to grieve and need to be cut some slack.

Related Articles:

None Found

Posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 8:42 am
Filed underOf women, men, venus and mars....
You can subscribe to get updates of Stone Cold comments to this article by Clicking here. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.