The Underpants Angel

A Checkout Line Survival Story

The young Walmart cashier looked at me from across her counter. She had just finished ringing up my underpants when she recited my total from the register screen.

I reached into my pocket to pay.

No sooner had my hand slid into my rear pocket than I discovered the pocket was empty. A small wave of confusion swept over me. I patted myself. No wallet.

My confusion turned into embarrassment. The same kind of humiliation I once felt when I peed my pants onstage in front of the entire school assembly and all my friends’ parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and next of kin.

I remember the accident well. I remember clutching my bladder while wearing my little Christmas costume. I stopped singing “Sweet Little Jesus Boy,” and whispered, “Please, God, no.” I remember the sensations I felt. The feeling of plumbing system failure. The strange momentary euphoria that comes with complete urethral spasm surrender. And suddenly, I had a river of life flowing out of me.

This was that same kind of feeling.

A line of customers began gathering behind me. I glanced at all my bagged items and felt another wave of embarrassment. Still in the cashier’s hand was the new package of cotton underpants.

She said the total again.

“Gimme a second,” I said with a nervous laugh.

I started patting my pockets once more. This time I swatted harder, just in case the added effort might help a wallet spontaneously materialize. Then I graduated to fumbling around in my pockets. Then I started doing the sacred ritual dance of the middle-aged idiot who left his wallet at home.

“Omigosh,” I said. “I think I left my wallet at home.”

The cashier blinked. She was still holding the men’s Fruit of the Looms.

“Do you have the Walmart app?” she asked.

“What’s that?”

“What’s an app?”

“I know what an app is, but I don’t understand what you…”

“Do you have the Walmart app, sir?”

“I don’t understand, my wallet was sitting on the—”

“The Walmart app,” she said louder. “Do you have it?”

“I don’t know.” I handed her my phone. “Do I?”

I now had Stockholm syndrome. I just wanted to please my captor.

The young woman took my phone and started swiping away. The underpants remained clutched in her hand while she used her thumb on my screen. She finally found the Walmart app my wife had evidently installed.

The cashier scanned my phone with her laser gun a few times, but she was getting frustrated.

The line behind me grew longer.

One customer cleared her throat.

Another customer, an elderly woman, was shooting hate rays at me.

“The app ain’t working,” said the cashier. “Do you have any other way to pay?”

“I can clean your house.”

She gave me a once-over. “I’m going to void the sale.”

People in line were already abandoning ship. Several had left the cashier lane with vocal grumbles. The cashier started punching buttons when a lone woman appeared from the shadows. She was pushing a shopping buggy full of white bread.

“Is your name Sean?” the white-bread woman said.

I was disoriented.

“I thought that was you,” she went on.

“Have we met?”

The woman was grinning now. “I said to myself, that’s just gotta be him. I just knew it was you. I want to give you a hug.”

Before I could say anything else, we embraced.

The cashier sighed as we hugged, vacantly staring at the package of underpants in her hand. Then, she eyed me over, mid-hug, as though asking herself the age-old question: boxers or briefs? Or maybe, she thought, he was wearing those crotch-strangling athletic hybrid underpants which cause temporary lower body paralysis and neutralize all procreative capacity.

“I’d like to buy his groceries,” said the woman whom I was hugging.

“Really?” the cashier said.

The woman released me, then removed her credit card.

“What?” I said. “No, that’s very kind but it’s not necessary, I can’t let you—”

But the woman was already handing her plastic to the cashier.

“Are you sure, ma’am?” said the cashier, using my underpants to gesture toward the register display screen. “His total is almost $200.”

“I’ll buy them,” the woman said.

The cashier shrugged. Then rang the woman up.

The woman’s name is Donna Vaughn, and she works at the local nursing home as a dietary manager. I told her how grateful I was. And I assured her I’d be making a special trip to visit the nursing home to pay her back tomorrow. And I kept telling her how pitiful I must seem, and how stupid I felt.

She just smiled and said: “Quit your sorrying. All things happen for a reason. God puts us in the right place at the right time, don’t he?”

Don’t he just.

Boxers.