Desperately shopping for underwear together was a bonding experience

Recently I was trying to fly back from New York where I'd been staying with my spouse, and my return flight got canceled after I’d already been waiting around the airport for several hours. My body and brain were very done with airports and needed a break before attempting the journey again, so I had the airline rebook the flight for six days later.

However, since this was an unplanned extension of my trip, I hadn’t done my laundry recently, having been planning to do it when I got home. I still had clean socks, shirts, pants and dresses left, but was completely out of clean underwear, and I didn’t want to do the laundry before getting back home because I am needlessly stubborn and also lazy. So I needed to get a few pairs of underwear to tide me over until my flight.

My spouse and I went out for dinner one night and I mentioned this conundrum to them. We decided to go on a little shopping excursion after our meal, since we were in a neighborhood peppered with stores like J. Crew, Aerie, Gap and H&M. We figured it would be a five-minute detour on our way back to their place.

It was not. We went to store after store and literally none of them had any women’s underwear in stock. We looked high and low. We asked around. Nothing.