Road Apples
May 4, 2009


 Keeping our filthy paws out of those silky drawers

By Tim Sanders

[Before we begin this week’s column, I suppose I should answer a question I received last week from Tiffany Sparks of Carrollton, Georgia, who wrote: “If you know so much about popular culture, then what do you think of Brangelina?” Well, Tiffany, it may surprise you to know that I am an enthusiastic fan of Brangelina. At my age, you can never get too much fiber in your diet.]


So on to this week’s topic, which is how you can determine a person’s sex by looking into that person’s drawers. No, wait, don’t take that the wrong way. The drawers I’m referring to are not underpants or “bloomers,” they’re the kind of drawers you find in dressers and cupboards. Let me explain.

Men and women view drawers differently. That is because men look at drawers functionally, while women look at them in a decorative sense. Most historians agree that the “drawer” was invented by primitive cave dwellers shortly after they discovered fire. When these early cave persons had leftover firewood, the females insisted the wood be neatly stacked in the dining area, next to the mammoth bones, where the whole clan could enjoy it. After years of tripping over those huge stacks of wood with doilies on top, the males finally said to each other, “I think we could build something out of all that lumber!” So around either March or April of 50,000 BC, the drawer was invented. For several centuries thereafter, no cave was complete without a drawer, and cave drawers were admired by one and all. In those early days the drawer was not particularly useful, since carbon dating clearly shows that the chest of drawers and the cupboard were not invented until eons later. We do know that sometime around 35,000 BC, the cave dwellers affixed crude bottoms to their drawers, and began using them for shoes. Subsequent ice ages and tusked woolly termite infestations seriously impeded drawer development. No real progress was made until around 2000 BC, when the Egyptians attached handles and began burying their Pharaohs in their drawers. It was not until around 1400 BC, sometime during the Exodus from Egypt, that an Israelite haberdasher invented the chifforobe with caster wheels.

But I digress. The point is that while mankind was developing what eventually became an extremely useful piece of furniture, womankind was more interested in making that piece of furniture attractive, both outside and, more significantly, inside. And to this day, men and women look at drawers altogether differently. Most men agree that if they can stuff things into a drawer and manage to close it without breaking it or leaving things sticking out, the drawer has served its purpose.

There are several drawers in our house–drawers in things like dressers and chests and cabinets and so on–and Marilyn and I disagree on all of them. There are two in particular which always cause contention. One is a large cabinet drawer in the kitchen where she keeps her plastic containers for storing leftovers. When I empty the dishwasher and put those plastic containers away, I always put them in the proper drawer. The thing is, she is convinced that round containers should always be stacked inside other round containers, and square containers should without exception be stacked in square containers, and that all of those containers should have the appropriate lids stacked atop them in an orderly fashion. She contends that it saves time when you’re looking for the right container for, let’s say, leftover green beans. My argument, which I’m sure most men would agree with, is that whatever time that might save would be lost in sorting all of those things out before you put them in the drawer in the first place. Just jam them in there so the drawer will close, and sort everything out later. That is my technique, and it works pretty well.

Which brings us to my underwear drawer, which is not in the kitchen, but in the bedroom. When she takes my underwear from the dryer, Marilyn always folds it very carefully and places it in the proper dresser drawer. Sometimes, however, when she is placing neatly folded underwear into that drawer, she has what drawer experts like to call a “conniption.” She finds the underwear already there is not exactly the way she originally deposited it a few days earlier. It is scattered about, crumpled, and she can plainly see that I’ve been rummaging around in there without any thought as to that drawer’s aesthetic appearance. She generally asks the same rhetorical question: “WHO’S BEEN DIGGING AROUND IN HERE?” She knows perfectly well who’s been digging around in there, but she always has to ask.

“Would you just look at this mess in here!” she says.

Since I already have a good idea of what it looks like, I decline.

“I’d be ashamed to have an underwear drawer that looked like that,” she’ll say.

I usually say something that a man would consider logical, like for example: “That is one of the reasons I leave it closed.” I always say this in a calm, rational manner, but it never mollifies her.

“But look at that underwear, IT’S ALL WRINKLED! What were you doing in there?” she asks, knowing full well that what I was doing was looking for a specific pair of briefs, not just any old briefs. I do have favorites, after all.

The conversation always ends with her telling me that my underwear was neatly folded when she put it in there, and now it’s all wrinkled and unwearable. And my response, much like the response of my cave man forefathers, is that of course it is wearable, and nobody will know how wrinkled it is, because IT’S UNDERWEAR.


Guys understand drawers. Whether you’re talking dresser drawers or underdrawers, mine are there for go, not for show.