Short Shorts and getting in trouble

So, time for a totally random story, but I remembered this story because it happened right before Christmas, about 17 years ago. I played hoops for West High School. And let me just say...our uniforms were old. That means that those uniforms have been washed and washed and washed. And dried and dried and dried. And that means a lot of shrunken shorts and shirts. I was either the shortest or the second shortest player on our team and I was one of the younger ones which meant that I got to pick last and because I was one of the shortest, I usually ended up with the 'small' uniform. Now, it was small to begin with...but after 5+ years of being washed and dried, they became itsy bitsy.

Basically, I was wearing a speedo on the basketball court. West High thrived on intimidation against other schools due to our reputation. Let me just say--there was NOTHING intimidating about me coming out in that uniform. Other players on our team had to deal with the same thing, so most of us wore spandex under shorts...but they had a High School rule my Junior year that you could wear nothing like spandex under your jerseys unless you had a Doctor's Note that allowed it (seriously, how stupid is that). So, I ditched the spandex and wore longish boxers under my jersey shorts. The two pictures that I have included here are from my Junior year so that you can see just how tight those bad boys were.



So, big game is here: West High vs. East High. I was a West student but I lived in East High school boundaries, so I had a bunch of friends that went there...add to that, it was a huge rivalry. The stands were packed in our game against them at home.

First half was over and it was a tight game. So, we go out to start the second half and we are about to inbound the ball. All of a sudden, the ref blows his whistle to stop the game before the 2nd half even begins. The ref points at me and says 'Fix your shorts Johnson.' I look down and my boxers had gone below the shorts. I kinda fiddle with my boxers to hide them better under my shorts, to no avail. Now, the audience is quiet because nobody knows why the game isn't starting. The ref yells at me again to fix my shorts so I keep trying. My coach yells at the ref asking what is wrong and the ref says back to him that I have undershorts coming below my shorts. The crowd is dead quiet. My coach looks at me and asks me whats wrong and I tell him that it was my boxers. My coach shakes his head and yells at the ref: "Its his underwear, lets play' and the ref yells back at me and my coach 'I don't care if its his underwear, he needs to fix it or he gets a technical.' Yep, let me just say, once again, that every fan in the stands was now hearing (it was amazingly quiet in the gym as people were trying to figure out what was going on) my coach argue with the ref about my underwear. How awesome and disturbing is that?

So, the coach has to pull me out of the game and tells me to go down to the locker-room to fix it. I am running off the court as everyone is trying to determine exactly what kind of boxers that I am wearing. I get down to the locker-room and a teammate is there to get me into the lockerroom (we had to lock the doors down there so that we weren't robbed and he had the key). I run in and I am trying to figure out what to do...and my teammate kindly offers me his underwear. Yeah, I turned him down. Thanks for the offer though, that was sweet and incredibly creepy.

I decided to keep on wearing my boxers though I ended up pulling them up to the my chin nearly so that they would not show. I ran back up to the gym and thankfully I did not get a standing ovation for being able to fix my underwear. I had no problems the rest of the game except for the discomfort of having my boxers about 6 inches higher than they should have been. And yes, we lost that frakkin' game, no thanks to the ref. This story does have a good ending though as thankfully, my senior year, we got new jerseys and my barely-legal basketball shorts were finally thrown away.