The Underwear Syndrome

I live in Oakland in a typical neighborhood. It’s a marginal affair with the occasional dead body at the end of the street. It’s not the kind of place I would ever be caught dead outside my house without pants, shirt, shoes and probably a switchblade. What I can’t understand are my neighbors who wander outside their home in their skivvies. That’s right – their undies. It’s not one or two of them. It’s a whole army of them. I saw my next door neighbor go out in his boxers and retrieve his morning paper from the sidewalk, not from the front porch or his newsbox. He walked to the sidewalk, not in an apologetic sort of way either. He walked out there like he was clad in Levi’s and a shirt. Look at me, except all he had on was boxers and a T shirt. I saw my other neighbor two doors down and across the street come out of the house in her lingerie and wash out a garbage can. Her hose is around the side of her house. She didn’t have on a bathrobe. She had on some poofy slippers with ostrich feathers on them. I stopped to talk to her about an abandoned her in front of her house. Her boobies fell out of silkies as she bent over to wash her bucket. Then there’s the guy with the beautiful Japanese garden. He walks around in his P.J. all dang day. He greets me while I am walking the dogs. “How are you? I don’t have any underwear on and the fly doesn’t close on my P.J. short bottoms.” And what about the tall dude on the dog walk that was rummaging in his recycling one night? He didn’t hear me and the dogs as we approached. There he was all bent over in his dress shirt and his undies. That one got a yelp of surprise from me. He is the only one that scurried back into his house. Is there some unwritten code I’m not privy to. Paragraph 309 section 7. sub section 32 Wander freely in underwear and P.J.s all about the neighborhoods of Oakland. Show no shame. Let your privates hang out. It doesn’t count.