It’s a Seinfeld line (a candidate for the Four Worst Words You Can Hear, topping “We have to talk”), but I actually got this question last night, when I had a woman over to my apartment for dinner (and VP debate). She was putting her jacket in my daughter’s bedroom (my daughter’s been off to college for the last month or more) and she picked up a brassiere from the foot of the bed and asked me the dread question.
It’s almost certainly my daughter’s, except that my daughter is usually very neat and very private and has never left any sort of undergarment lying around a room (her bed was made, her other clothing was all hung up or else put in a hamper and washed weeks ago.)
I offered my daughter as my Likely Suspect #1, and the woman said, looking at the style and the size, “I don’t think so. She looks smaller than this, and the style isn’t what someone her age would wear.”
I shrugged. “Hell if I know, then. It sure isn’t mine.”
She put the bra down, and the issue surprisingly faded from the conversation. Since I don’t remember having any other female guests in the month since my daughter left for school, I figure it’s gotta be hers, uncharacteristic as it may be, but it was a very strange moment, literally a scene out of a comedy routine.
My brother just recently moved out of my parents house and into the dorms, but about 6 months ago his girlfriend was in his room and found a bra in his laundry. She freaked out about it for a while and it turns out it was my mom’s bra and it had just inadvertently ended up in my brother’s laundry without him realizing it.
Do you go to a laundromat? If you do some other woman’s bra could very easily have ended up in your washer or dryer and you might not have noticed.
The flip side of the coin can also be unsettling. My wife once paused in front of the dresser and wondered out loud, “What happened to my such-and-such bra?” Um, sweetie, how did you lose your underwear?
Know what’s even more uncomfortable? When you go hang out with a guy you’ve been seeing for a couple of weeks… and he casually asks “Is this your bra?” as he pulls out a lacy black number in 36DD you’ve never seen before.
Errr… no, Captain Smooth, most certainly not mine.
I guess he hadn’t been looking at my boobs closely enough to realise that even the world’s most generous optimist wouldn’t consider me a DD. After that night, he didn’t get any more chances to look at my boobs either.
The day after my current girlfriend spent the night at my house happened to be the day that the cleaning lady came over. After the cleaning lady left, I saw that she put a woman’s bracelet on the bedside table. I figured that my girlfriend must have lost it during the night. I called the girlfriend and told her that she lost a bracelet and that I would give it to her the next time I saw her.
When she was next over I made a big deal over returning her bracelet and heard the dreaded words, “that’s not mine.” Oh, man, did I feel like a dickhead. Luckily my girlfriend had a good sense of humor. The bracelet had to have belonged to one of a couple of other women who had been over in the previous couple of months and had hidden itself well enough such that it took the cleaning lady a couple of visits to find it.
Ugh. I had this same experience, except at least the bra was kind of . . . ratty. This made me annoyed that he would think I’d wear a grungy thing like that AND annoyed that he couldn’t keep women and boob sizes straight AND annoyed that, being unable to keep them straight he thought it acceptable to ask for help from me. I made it a whole lot easier for him by removing myself from the pool of Visitors with Boobs at his house.
“Its ‘Salvation’ in front… ‘McCain’s Mansion’ in second going into the far stretch. But Wait! Here comes ‘Mrs. Kowalski’, coming up fast on the outside!!!”
"Yes, its a clean pass on McCain’s Mansion.
Its ‘Salvation’ and ‘Mrs. Kowalski’…
‘Salvation’ and ‘Mrs. Kowalski’…
‘Salvation’ and ‘Mrs. Kowalski’, neck and neck…
If it’s not your daughters, I’m sure she’s had friends over in her room. I’m not implying anything sexual, but maybe it’s one of her friend’s bras? Sometimes girls try on clothes for each other, and –
– shit – now my mind’s wandering. What was I saying?