With the Cloth Diaper and boys dropped off, Papa Underpants started his walk to the office. As the solitude of his morning commute relaxed his fibers, the Junior Size Elementary behind absorbed that rattled energy like a Sanitary Napkin and buzzed to life.

Young articles of clothing tumbled through the halls. Crocs tramped by losing their widgets, dusty Blue Jeans waggled this way and that. A squat Sundress blitzed down the center of the hall, pumping her arms at top speed.

Navigating the crowded school, Little Briefs held his backpack straps tight at his side, never straying far from Boxer Shorts. At the end of the hall, Boxer Shorts stopped and turned toward him.

“Okay, Little Briefs,” he said. “I’ll see you at recess.”

Little Briefs nodded and squeezed his backpack straps tighter.

Boxer Shorts turned to see his friends--a pair of thick-rimmed glasses and a full-brim fisherman’s hat--calling to him for the stairwell. He waved and ran to meet them, leaving Little Briefs to fend for himself in the sea of crashing, clashing, and dashing young clothes.

Little Briefs hunched down and quickened his pace. Avoiding the other clothes as best he could, he made for his 5T homeroom. But just before he reached the door, a jarring force knocked him to the ground.

“Hey, Skidmark.”

Little Briefs looked up toward the menacing voice. Standing over him and smiling, Jockstrap giggled, his miniature pouch bouncing ever so slightly.

Little Briefs clambered to his feet. “Don’t push me,” he said, shoving Jockstrap by his junior-sized pouch. The boys’ commotion caught the attention of Reflective Vest, the morning hall monitor. “You two, treat one another with respect!” he said. He fluoresced a sickly yellowish-green.

The boys broke it up and Jockstrap ran ahead into the classroom. Since 3T, the two had been best mates, practically sewn together at the hip. But now, starting 5T in a class of unfamiliar garments, the seam they once shared began to fray. Little Briefs gathered his backpack straps and went into his homeroom. He hung his backpack on the retractable line running along the wall and without saying hello to his classmates, took his seat.

Arranged in groups of four, Little Briefs’ desk catty-cornered Cowgirl Boot’s, Suspenders’, and now T-Shirt’s--a new student who joined the class the second week of school. Keeping to himself, Little Briefs took a crayon from his pencil case and opened his notebook. But instead of drawing, his curiosity took hold and guided his eyes up toward his new classmate.

When T-Shirt joined the class, Little Briefs noticed small white flecks snowing off T-Shirt’s forest green fabric onto his desk. Upon this morning’s examination, T-Shirt appeared fleck-free, but something more mortifying caught Little Briefs’ attention. A rod-straight folding crease ran horizontally across T-Shirt’s breast. While this may seem a normal state for an article of clothing, most of the clothes at Junior Size Elementary rolled themselves for bedtime. Mesmerized by the crested fold, Little Briefs could not look away, and the longer he stared, the more pronounced and feverish the crease appeared to grow.

“Howdy, Little Briefs.”

Cowgirl Boot watched Little Briefs in expectation of a reply. To play it cool after staring at T-Shirt’s fold, Little Briefs turned ever so slightly toward her, but to her disappointment, he averted his gaze and said nothing.

He let his eyes fall to the open notebook on his desk, and through a rushing, pumping sound in his ears, watched as the crayon traversed the page in his hand: a section of straight line that devolved into long, looping squiggles. Across the room, Jockstrap’s voice cut through the noisiness of the young clothes. Hearing him laugh with the students at his cubicle, Little Briefs wished he sat closer to his friend.

Squeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The grated speaker on the classroom wall shook and a terrible feedback poured into the room. Mr. Flannel, the 5T teacher previously engaged in removing what looked like cat hair from himself, squinted at the piercing sound something fierce.

A voice came over the speaker.

“Is this what I talk into?”

And then another.

“No, give me that!”

The two voices bickered somewhere far away. A metallic crackle cut them off, and then a third voice came over the loudspeaker.

“Hey, don’t touch tha—”

Squeeeeeeeeeeee!

This time, some of the children covered their ears. All perceivable emotion drained from Mr. Flannel’s face. A period of silence fell upon the room, followed by a gentle click.

“Good morning, Junior Size Elementary,” a youthful voice proclaimed over the intercom. “Thank you for tuning into the morning announcements. It’s Wednesday, and—”

“Hey, That’s my part to say!”

The two voices squabbled again until some invisible adult, presumably hidden deep in the wiring of the intercom system, disconnected the microphone.

Little Briefs scanned the room. The other children seemed unfazed by the commotion, so he returned to his drawing. A squid, sitting in what appeared to be a lawn chair, looked back at him, one of its tentacles securely wrapped around the red crayon.

The intercom clicked.

“It’s Wednesday and the weather is warm and sunny and for lunch today is a cotton parfait topped with buttons and clips.”

A moment of silence, another click, and the second voice.

“This afternoon is Repair Fair, so bring your rips and tears ready to be mended!”

Some static, and then the two voices together.

And then the two voices together: “And remember: in a world where you can be anything, be—”

“Five siiiiiiiiiix!”

The children exploded in laughter. Mr. Flannel stared off at nothing and shook his head with the look of another washed-up garment wondering what life even is.

“Okay, okay,” he said, hoisting himself off his hanger, which, despite spending so much time on it, never prevented Mr. Flannel from looking like he spent the night in the bottom of a dirty hamper. Rumpled as he was, though, Mr. Flannel had his charms, and rumor had it he once made a living as a musician, playing the washboard in some lesser-known Jug Band. But the times they are a changin’, and with the invention of the electric washing machine, the crowds lost interest in the spoon-tappin’, washboard scratchin’ bands of Flannel’s day, leaving him to employ a road-hardened deadpan stage presence to teach 5T, occasionally muttering something under his breath about video killing the radio star. And the children adored him.

Mr. Flannel brushed himself off and ran the class through their morning rigmarole: learning spot-treating and mending, practicing their rolling and folding (as if any of the young apparel would do such a thing). In the final period before lunch, he summoned a character to the front of the class from the hallway.

“We have a special guest this morning,” he said. “Does anyone know who this is?”

Little Briefs knew, but didn’t answer. One of his classmates took the lead.

“That’s Jockstrap's dad!”

“That’s right,” said Mr. Flannel. “Officer Cup is here to tell us a bit about what he does for his job.” Mr. Flannel put a sleeve on the shoulder of the bulbous Ball Guard next to him and outstretched the other to the class. “Officer Cup, the floor is yours.”

Jockstrap’s dad stood squat before the class, pushing his hard plastic dome toward the children in self-importance. He lifted a box of dryer sheets to his vent hole, mimicking a CB radio.

“Shh-KKK, class, this is Officer Cup, Shh-KKK. What’s your FIVE-SIX? I repeat, what’s your FIVE-SIX, over, Shh-KKK?”

The children gawked at Officer Cup in silence. Jockstrap put his head down and shook it back and forth.

Officer Cup continued: “Do any of you know what the job of a Cup is?” he said.

After a brief silence, Training Bra shouted above the group. “To reduce bounce?” she asked. “That’s what my mom does.”

“Shh-KKK, negative, Training Bra, Shh-KKK. My job,” Office Cup said, lifting and reposturing his dome so as to impress the children with its oblong arc, “is to protect, support, and secure.” He emphasized each of these last three points by waggling a loose finger at the class.

Officer Cup droned on and his voice dwindled into the periphery as Little Briefs fell into the page in front of him. Enraptured by the squid, its tentacles flowed across and searched the edges of the paper. One of the winding appendages handed Little Briefs the crayon, and he took it and followed the seabeast’s command for an eleventhtacle.

“Little Briefs?”

Jerking his glance to the front of the room, Little Briefs discovered Mr. Flannel and Officer Cup looking back at him expectantly. The pounding in his chest picked up and he sat stunned, every eye in the class surely on him.

“Just a reminder,” Mr. Flannel said. “Tomorrow is your father’s turn to join the class.”

“I know,” said Little Briefs.

“What does your dad do, Little Briefs?” asked Cowgirl Boot. Suspenders and T-Shirt looked toward him.

“He doesn’t do anything!” said Little Briefs.

“Shh-KKK, class, be on the lookout for a deadbeat Underparent, Shh-KKK.” Officer Cup nudged Mr. Flannel with his elbow and winked.

“I’m sure he does something,” said Mr. Flannel.

“No he doesn’t. He makes us do everything. He’s always telling me and Boxer Shorts to take out the Dust Bunny and to go up and down the stairs and to do things for our Cloth Diaper and he doesn’t do anything!”

“Wow, your Papa sounds bossy,” said Cowgirl Boot. Some of the other clothes nodded in agreement.

“Now, now,” said Mr. Flannel. “I’m sure Mr. Underpants does plenty, and he can tell us all about it tomorrow. Let’s all thank Officer Cup for visiting us today.”

The class chanted an uninspired thank you and Officer Cup waved and smiled as if he were a float rider in the annual SPANX^®giving Day Parade. The bell rang and the young clothes pushed back their chairs. Little Briefs looked down to find the squid wrapping a tendril around his wrist, dragging him into the deep, past the floating clothes and beyond the great agitator sloshing the tap-cold seas above.

---