To Avoid Pregnancy: Don’t Forget To Carry The ‘1’

WARNING:  Today’s post contains some terms that might be upsetting to the highly squeamish, such as ‘menstruation’, ‘undergarments’, and yes, I even go so far as to talk about ‘multi-column addition’.   If you happen to be one of those people with a delicate constitution, I advise you to turn away now and find another blog post of mine to read.  Try the one about the crop circles and the wallabies.  It seems to be very popular with the kind of reader who is amused by animals running in circles until they pass out.  To each their own, I say.

This isn’t easy for me either, you know.   I don’t spend my days reading about underwear patents because I have nothing better to do.  I do it primarily as a selfless act of public service, and partially because this is so wonderfully stupid I just had to share it with you.

So if you do turn away, don’t come crying to me when you’re knocked up.  I’m going to tell you about a product that could save you the time and trouble of looking at your calendar.  Today I discovered that there is actually a patent out for something called “Calendar Underwear”, and it looks like this:

To avoid pregnancy: Don't forget to carry the 1

Oh, I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking, “Deb, how on Earth could a pair of underwear that is festooned with hearts and jewels PREVENT pregnancy?  Isn’t that sort of thing meant to encourage…. well, that sort of thing?”

Well, of course.  But that’s not what the hearts are for, in this case.  Apparently, for those of us who are too forgetful to remember when we last had our periods, the inventors of Calendar Underwear have been kind enough to embroider a month’s worth of numbers onto the front of the garment.  At the same time, there is a grid above this calendar that holds not one but two heart-shaped clips, one silver and one gold.  These clips are there to make sure that the process of remembering the date of your last menstrual period is easy-peasy.

Here’s how it works, and it really couldn’t be simpler.  The patent says that you are supposed to put a clip on each of the far sides of the top grid and, moving the gold clip containing a vertical pin from right to left, count the days that you don’t have your period.  At the same time, the silver clip, which has a horizontal pin, is moved from left to right to mark the… um, days going backwards from the end of the month?  Wait, that can’t be right.  No, here it is:  As you move the silver clip, add those days to the days marked by the gold clip, carry the ‘1’ and then multiply by the number of days since you last burst into tears in the middle of the supermarket because they were out of the Fudge-Covered Oreos and Tequila you crave so much at certain times of the month. The number you arrive at by performing these calculations is the number of days left until your next period, expressed in pounds per square inch of water weight.  Immediately take the Xanax tablet conveniently located inside the silver clip and wash down with a full glass of Merlot.

The only thing the patent doesn’t address is the likelihood in the first place of hooking up with anyone when wearing the same pair of underwear every day for a month.

OK, squeamish people:  you can come back now.

Advertisement