Mystery Panties

OK, I can't resist elaborating on the "girls panties on the bus" story because 25+ years after the fact, its actually kinda funny.

Back in the day when we all still lived on the farm, we rode the school bus for about an hour in the morning and then an hour home again in the afternoon. Plenty of time for mischief for a bunch of semi-supervised farm kids. My best friend at the time and I sat in the seat second from the back, her little brother sat behind us and across the aisle and one seat forward were my little sister and her friend.

One day when I was in Grade 6 (I think?), my best friend's brother found a plastic bag at the back of the bus and low and behold, it contained a pair of girls panties! Turquoise-blue granny-panties. Being the shit-disturber that he was, he pulled them out, announced proudly what he had discovered and immediately started an interrogtion of all the girls on the bus to figure out who they belonged to. No one knew ... or at least no one was letting on.

For several weeks this continued; the panties were tossed around, there was a lot of teasing as kids are wont to do and all the girls emphatically rebuffed any connection to them! As time when by, it became more and more of a mystery, no one was owning up. As an aside, it is a sad statement as to how often they cleaned those busses when a pair of gaunchies could remain there for several weeks!

One day I happened to mention to my Mom about what had been going on on the school bus, not thinking much of it except that some silly girl was gonna be really red-faced if the truth was ever revealed. The legend had grown beyond our bus and by now, almost all the kids at school had heard. My Mom's response came as a big surprise and if this wasn't THE most humbling moment of my life, it was defintely top 5: horror of all horrors, the mystery panties were MINE! Huh?! I knew that I didn't leave them there and frankly, I didn't even recognize them until later, they were a pair I obviously hadn't worn in a while.

My Mom explained the story. My sister had had a sleep over with her friend a while back and unfortunately, the friend had had an "accident." My Mom generously loaned her a pair of clean underwear (mine!) to wear home; her Mom was to launder them and then return them. However, my sister's friend was too embarassed tell her Mom about the "accident." So rather than face the shame at home, she left the evidence on the bus.

Luckily my best friend was pretty good peeps and she could be trusted with my terrible secret. She understood the gravity of the situation; for a sixth-grader with a bit of a complex, this was the kinda thing that can ruin ya! So we came up with a plan. One day we discreetly got a hold of the panties, covertly smuggled them off the bus and secretly disposed of them once and for all in the girls washroom garbage.

As far as anyone ever knew, the mystery of the wayward panties was never solved, my reputation (such as it was) remained intact and my friend's brother moved on to taunting us girls about something else as only he could do.

All's well that ends well and after all these years, one just has to look back and laugh.