I grab the mail and packages off the porch in my underwear sometimes. But I don’t go further than my porch.
Funny story. I was waiting for a package to be delivered once and got a knock on my door. So I opened the door in my underwear to get the package when I see who else but my local State Representative campaigning door to door. And I had to sit and listen to her stump speech and then ask me what my concerns were for a few minutes. So at least one politician has seen me in my underwear.
Did you tell her that your immediate concern was that you were sitting around in just your underwear?
The OP specified “public.” I wouldn’t go anywhere in public in boxers, or PJ’s or shirtless (except a beach-like venue).
However, since my house is very secluded, I will often be outside (to the garbage can or other short trip) in the equivalent of boxers or completely naked.
A single step, two steps max, out on to the back patio to lay the bathmat over the covered patio furniture out in the sun to dry after showering. Back yard is not fenced on 2 of 3 sides.
To my mailbox, about 45 feet (15 meters) from my front door. Don’t care who sees me (the neighbor does this, too).
I have boxers that have pockets. Those- I will go as far as the mailbox, 50 feet.
My smartwool boxers, i will use as swim trunks, in a pinch.
But not to go 'out".
Tell that to my former landlord.
And earlier discussion on this board about the past practice of doing school PE in their underwear in England. People used to be less paranoid about being under-dressed. Some people still are.
I don’t think I’ve ever left my bedroom wearing just boxers, much less gone outside. I put them on as part of getting dressed and I’ve yet to stop the process halfway and just wander about.
A friend of mine worked in retail clothing for years and always claimed that the majority of people don’t know how to buy clothes that fit properly, and the frequent claim I see on the internet (as a whole, not just here) that being fully dressed is restricting and uncomfortable seems to bear that out.
I have the opposite experience. Years ago - maybe twenty - I had a job where I provided technical support, and that involved me occasionally guesting at other manufacturing sites (same parent company) in their clean manufacturing areas. Obviously you have to dress for a clean area, which involved stripping down to the socks and shreddies before gowning up to enter. Essentially, all the guys from the shift would change together to enter the area.
In one particular clean area that I visited, the guys wore the most overengineered underwear I ever saw - I swear some had below the knee boxers with multiple pockets. Can’t vouch for the ladies for obvious reasons. Well, I say obvious…
On this particular site, it was common practice - perhaps planned, for all I know - for the cleaning ladies to wander in during changing and admire their male workmates, passing overtly sexual comments, while the men joked back. Nobody seemed to regard it as in any way odd. This would have been weird enough for a stranger to cope with anyways (hell, swap the genders around, how would that look?) but I’m one for function and comfort - I wear briefs.
This, friends, is the only time in my life when I profoundly wished I was wearing boxers.
j
Boxers can look like a pair of shorts while that’s never true with briefs. Either way, I agree with you & I’m not going out in underwear, unless the house is on fire.
It’s interesting that this zombie was resurrected exactly a decade after the last post.
I’ve moved three times!! from that house in Japan and now finally in another here in Taiwan.
We’re on a street with not that much traffic, so I’ll go out the door to get something, but probably not the entire 20 feet to the street.
You know that nightmare where you are somewhere in public and not wearing pants?
I have a recurring nightmare, decades later, that I’m stuck back in high school. (sometimes it’s because apparently there’s a “remedial program”) And I have just plain forgotten to wear pants. But I do have boxers on. And I’m trying to explain to everyone that this is totally fine and all the important bits are covered and everything is fine. (somehow in the dream I’m not being arrested or anything, just embarrassed)
Tru dat; I can see why others might wear boxers to, say, step outside and pick up the newspaper, while they wouldn’t do the same in briefs. Just that wearing boxers instead of briefs wouldn’t change my behavior.
Eleven years, actually. 
I live in the suburbs south of San Francisco, which around here means the houses to either side of me are 10’ from mine, my driveway is 20’ long, and houses across the street are 60’ away from my front door. I would never go outside in my boxers. I rarely leave my bedroom with just boxers.
Boxers are underwear, and that’s what I wear. Not briefs.
But I cheat! For bedtime or lounging around the house I wear gym shorts and no boxers, and a t-shirt. Mr. Happy is fully contained. I’ll go outside in that to put out the trash, no problem. It’s very comfortable. And it’s not underwear. Not really.
I have a pretty big collection of Crazy Boxer boxer briefs that I don’t hesitate to wear out in public. I’ve worn them swimming in lakes, hotel pools and in my backyard pool. I’ve worn them as bike shorts. Once I rode right past a cop wearing them. Since they are novelty design, everyone assumes they’re bike shorts.
WTF is up with the zombies lately.
The OP might find himself here.
Reported
Only on my own property. I’ll go to the mailbox in boxers. They look like shorts if you aren’t looking too close.
If you’re looking too close at my underwear, that’s your fault, not mine.