Stolen Underwear: For Adults Only

Many young newlyweds begin married life with modest housing. I was not an exception and yet my husband and I were quite proud of our simple, second-floor, walk-up apartment and all its amenities. Among those were a covered parking space, swimming pool, and laundry room. That laundry room boasted a couple of coin operated washers and a dryer.

Most of the time I shunned the dryer and instead took advantage of the Phoenix sun and used the lines strung behind the laundry room. Situated right below my kitchen window it was surrounded on two sides by the complex buildings and on the third by a brick fence making it a private place to hang laundry. It was a week before Pesach when I learned, the hard way, that using the dryer wasn’t always such a bad idea.

It all started when I was in the kitchen with a friend busy with holiday preparations. I happened to glance out the window and saw a teenage boy riding his bike between the clotheslines. It was a strange place for a bike ride. A second glance made me understand why he was there.

My underwear was missing from the line!

“You put my underwear back,” I called out the window using my best teacher voice.

Apparently, I’d been successful imitating the strictest teacher I’d ever had. He stopped in his tracks. Looking uncertain he denied he knew what I was talking about.

“Get my husband,” I hissed to my friends.

She scurried out of the kitchen calling my husband’s name to no avail. The apartment wasn’t that big but he wasn’t responding. She was embarrassed to open a closed door. The seconds were ticking away. I lost eye contact with the boy and he took off.

I went to sleep that night disgruntled that I’d almost caught the thief red-handed and he’d gotten away. I was also concerned about the price of replacing my underwear.

The following morning I took off on my bike for the nursery school where I taught. My missing underwear was still on my mind and halfway there I noticed a teenage boy standing in, what I assumed, was his carport. Could he be the same teenager from the day before? I took a closer look and gasped. He was exposing himself! I pedaled off as fast as I could. Half a mile later I was panting when I entered the nursery school’s office and called my husband.

“Call the police!” he instructed me.

I did and they arrived only a few minutes after my husband.  The two officers were most supportive as they jotted down my pertinent information and left for the site where I’d seen the pervert. He, of course, denied having done anything wrong, but the policemen gave me the distinct impression that they didn’t believe him.

In all honestly, though, I wasn’t one hundred percent certain that he wasn’t telling the truth. Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing. The school’s principal poo-pooed my doubt without a second thought.

“You wouldn’t imagine THAT!” She exclaimed.

Still, I wasn’t so sure. After all, I was still obsessing about my missing underwear. In fact, I wanted to get a search warrant and check out the teenager’s room, certain that I would find my underwear hidden there. Since he wasn’t anywhere near being public enemy number one, or even one hundred, there was no search warrant.

So we managed to find a place in the budget to replace my stolen underwear and I never hung the replacements on the clothesline while I was living in Phoenix.

The teenager is now probably nearing the age of sixty. Sometimes I wonder if he remembers the crazy lady who yelled at him to put her underwear back. More than that I’d love to know if he really was the same boy I passed on my bicycle the following day. If so, did the police coming to call on him shake him up? Did he get help and is now a fine, upstanding citizen? Or did their visit make him defiant and firm his footsteps on a life of deviant behavior? I guess I’ll never know.

My novel, Growing With My Cousin, a good winter read, is available at Jewish bookstores and on line at  http://www.feldheim.com/growing-with-my-cousin.html or

https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Cousin-Ester-Katz-Silvers/dp/194635113X/