Is this an 'old wives tale' about underwear or has this happened to you?

My mother fulminated against using a safety pin to repair a bra strap. I have had to be rushed to the ER only once in my life and I was wearing clean underwear, shorts and a T. I certainly didn’t care, given the state I was in.

I guess you can pay attention to that kind of nonsense if you care more about how you come off looking to the hospital staff than that your appendix has ruptured and you’re about to die.

I don’t wear underware 90% of the time, so, technically they are always clean, because they are in my drawer.

I’d say it’s subjective at best. As far as I am concerned ones underware ceases to be clean once it is put on. Sort of like saying that a kleenex is still clean after it had made contact with ones nose. lol

Obviously we’re not talking skid marks here, hopefully, so, splitting hairs aside pun intended, there would be varying degrees of “clean”, clearly. :-)

I follow this rule of thumb because of something my grandpa told me; when getting dressed up, dress up all the way. If you are going to put on a nice suit, wear new socks and underwear too. YOU will feel the difference.

Zensky, this is so true. You can feel the difference.

I remember a nurse telling me that it really is unimportant because if you are in an accident, chances are you will make a mess anyway. I have no idea if this is true or not.

My dad is an ER doc and I volunteered in his hospital and other ERs for a combined total of nearly a decade and I can tell you this much:
1. If you’re actually sick/injured enough to be in the ER – none of us care about your underwear and it’s possibly going to be cut off you or removed as you’re placed in a hospital gown anyways.
2. When people die very often they lose control of all their sphincters. So…underwear = not clean if you are in a very bad accident anyways.
3. The things people in the hospital are going to judge you by have nothing to do with the state of your clothing and much more by how you treat people. They also expect you’re at your worst (in pain/sick/disoriented)...so again, they SO do not care about your underwear.

**One notable exception: If you’re male and we have to cut away your jeans and Hell’s Angel biker clothing because you’ve been in a horrible motorcycle accident but we find lacy pink girl’s underpants under what’s left of your jeans…well…that might actually be noticed by the ER nurses and docs.

Well obviously my friend was tellling the truth. Thank you @geeky_mama.

How about wearing clean underwear just for the sake of wearing clean underwear? :)

I could never understand the saying, because I would never wear underwear to the point where it got “dirty”. Yeech! When I come across that saying, I always wonder to myself “Do some people really wear dirty underwear, and how in the heck did they get it so grossly dirty?” No, I always wear clean underwear, and it very rarely gets dirty, unless I have an accident. I never wear underwear at home——and even sometimes when I go out. But I keep my body really clean, so that helps.

@MRSHINYSHOES

Exactly! “Dirty” as in, clean in the morning, “dirty” at night by sheer wearing them all day, Vs. plucked out of the dirty underware pot nine days old. lol

@Coloma Like moldy bread, I’ll take jam instead! Lol.

Men should always wear clean underwear. Men’s clean underwear,

I think anyone should wear clean underwear, or better yet, keep themselves as clean as possible. Lol.

I am curious who would want to wear dirty underwear…

I wonder if clean means in good repair. I have some that are clean but getting kind of raggedy around the edges; usable but worn. I don’t wear those when I go to the doctor, even though he never sees them.

Hmmm…an underware riddle.
I’ll go for clean and slightly ragged instead of ragged and dirty. lol

Seems to be a slight conradiction here. The pants may be spotless when you put them on, but are more than likely going to be soiled in the event of a big truck bearing down on you at great speed.
”They were clean on this morning doctor I swear!”

Happened to me in college, underwear wasn’t dirty but was really ratty. I got run over, and in the ER I apologized to the nurses (people do that stuff when they’re in shock, it’s not stupid or even unusual) and they told me they had a pool going as to how many people would apologize for that on the first snowfall of the year, which was always filled with (usually minor) accidents.

Why would you ever wear a dirty underwear?

So people go out wearing soiled undies? I didn’t know that! I think it should be changed to say, “make sure you’re wearing MENDED underwear or those without holes in them in case…...”

My grandmother was totally like that! The summer I stayed with her at about age 5, I would get up in the morning, put on everything I wore the day before and she would nail me at the door of the pantry with some fresh “gotch” and say get in there and put these on.” That along with “get your legs down.” everytime I innocently put my feet up on the couch which revealed the ‘netherlands’ for all to see just like I was a Madonna in training.

I always likened it to the sentiment of my parents reminding me to eat carefully and mind wasting food because people were starving in “The 3rd World”. Basically, it’s a ploy to goad people to practice good hygiene if not also to try and be nattier dressers by not wearing threadbare or holey undies.

The medic staff wouldn’t care what state your undies are in anyways. That’s not their job. And anyways, with heart attacks, road accidents, bad seizures, abdominal injuries and what have you…you’re bound to shit, bleed or piss all over, so even if you had clean undies, it wouldn’t matter. Clean or not, hospital staff probably don’t even think about it, unless the state of your undies can help them determine some course of action. Somehow.

I wear clean underwear, because of hygiene, rather than if I were to end up at the hospital. I’d also be more worried about getting together with someone for a fun night, and not wearing something clean. Haha mood buster.

Why would you go out in soiled underwear? Because you didn’t get around to doing the damned wash! Different people/different priorities.

Or perhaps you were a college student that lived 5 miles from the laundromat and didn’t have a car and it was Vermont in February and all you had were some really ratty underpants that weren’t really dirty, but had been hastily hand washed so they weren’t Downy fresh…and then there was that Volkswagen Squareback. Ouch.