I pre-Margareted my underpants drawer.

Loyal readers will recall there is a special day of the year, Margaret Day, in which we celebrate my sister Margaret’s memory by throwing out our ratty old underpants and starting anew. Margaret was routinely scandalized by the state of my drawers drawer. I have no defense. In my early adulthood, impoverished, I practiced a form of arbitrary frugality in which I easily parted cash for a large pizza but couldn’t bear to buy necessities like underpants, toothpaste, or Kleenex, and to this day I will strangle a toothpaste tube to vapor, blow my nose in the same paper towel for a week, and can hardly bring myself to throw out a pair of panties. I can easily spend more on one dinner out than I do all year on Delicates.

But Margaret Day isn’t till December 13th.

I have managed to find underpants I like. After wearing the cotton ones inside out for years so the seam would be on the outside, I discovered the miracle of microfiber. I’m truly sorry they’re another petroleum product, but come on. I’m so sensitive I’ll hunt down splinters I’m sure I can feel in my underwear—invisible ones, like the nose hair on a shrew. Microfiber seamlessly made all that go away.

Unfortunately, that miracle stretch doesn’t last forever. The underwear will last only so long before losing all its collagen like the rest of us, and then it’s in a limbo of looseness for a couple days before going straight to hell. That day will start like any other and then the only thing stopping them from plummeting to my ankles is the crotch in my pants. Hopefully I’m not wearing a dress for the eventuality. I would hate to explain to the Emergency Room personnel bandaging me up that I got leg-shackled by my own underpants.

So this very morning I woke up thinking I should really check out the Vanity Fair website to see if there were any deals on underwear. And lo, right there at the top of my email queue was Vanity Fair in the flesh-tone, advertising a deal on panties. A really good one, too, a balm for the arbitrarily frugal heart. And as I started loading up my cart, they got cheaper and cheaper. It seemed like if I ordered enough underpants they’d start sending me money. And just like that, I’d bought fifteen pairs of underpants, originally $17 per, for $69.90, no shipping. Holy moly.

But have I upset the natural order of the universe by so blatantly pre-Margareting?

No. I think I can pick out Margaret’s strident soprano in the celestial choir. I’m in the clear. Come December 13th, I will go to town on the equally disreputable sock drawer.

I’m not one for signs and portents. I believe they exist, but my spirit has too much density for them to poke through. Other people see signs in random music playlists or bird visitations. I’m not so blessed. But this had to be a sign. It was too much coincidence. How likely is it I would wake up thinking about buying underpants? (Pretty likely, since I had to toss another elastically apathetic pair yesterday.) And that my preferred provider was having a great deal that very day? (Not unlikely. They do advertise deals.) No! This was definitely a portent. A sign of great things to come.

Specifically, fifteen pairs of Smoothing Comfort™ size 6 underpants, in five to seven days.