If a discussion in which undergarments figure in a major way makes you squeamish, you might wish to avert your eyes from the next couple of paragraphs. Today’s offering is an underwear-intensive column.

I have no idea about the history of underwear. If you are really interested in that aspect, you could Google it. Or ask Siri, preferably in a private place. If your phone starts talking to you about thongs, people are going to shoot dirty looks in your direction and move rapidly away from you, probably in a direction of someone in authority to whom they can report you.

So, for those 12 readers still with me, we have established that we don’t give a fig, so to speak, (but certainly a fig leaf) about how underwear came to be. We just care that it is here and can be used as an auxiliary pocket.

Auxiliary pockets are an absolute must for me due to the tragic fact that my current pocket situation is shamefully inadequate. I do not like to carry a purse because, well, I do not like to carry a purse. I do not like to carry anything. If there were Sherpas in Miami County, I would be their biggest customer. In today’s world, a person should have in her possession a minimum amount of stuff. My own minimum stuff includes a credit card with a large limit, a photo ID that in no way resembles me, some cash, a Chapstick, a knife and a phone. Now it is evident why I do not want to carry anything. I need my hands free in case I have to whip out my knife in the event of a self-defense emergency or whip out my Chapstick in the case of a dry lip emergency. Even the so-called five-pocket jeans will be overwhelmed by this load. Trying to fit these items into the provided pockets produces unsightly bulges. Since my body habitus already produces unsightly bulges in my clothing, I was forced to find auxiliary pockets. This leads us to today’s aforementioned topic, underwear.

Having mentioned thongs in the second paragraph, it is too late to avoid being indelicate. If you will indulge me just one more tasteless referral, I need to remind you we women have upper underwear and lower underwear. I am not for a minute suggesting anyone carry supplies in her lower underwear. As you will recall, an airline terrorist tried this. It earned him a lengthy prison sentence and undying ridicule.

What I have discovered, however, is that women’s upper underwear makes a great auxiliary pocket. (Even recognizing this is a family newspaper, can we, for the sake of brevity, call it a bra? We are going through a lot of ink here.) So one solution to a purse-aversion under-pocketed circumstance is to put my phone in my bra. For those seven remaining readers, five of whom are going, “Ugh! TMI!” don’t say I didn’t warn you. Unfortunately, storing one’s phone in one’s bra, for all its benefits, presents three significant drawbacks.

Drawback No. One: Size. This does not apply to me but I have a friend who is undergoing a serious bra-storage dilemma. She has one of those huge new iPhones. This phone will not fit in anyone’s bra. It will, by only a very small margin, fit in a backpack.

Drawback No. Two: Because I am a thoughtful, discrete 2016-type person, I do not use a loud annoying ring tone featuring the oeuvre of Justin Beiber. My phone is set to vibrate first and then to chirp a soft whirring noise. It’s the vibrate part that gives me pause. Every time it happens, just for a moment, I think it is my personal defibrillator going off. This is stupid, of course, because defibrillators are not normally implanted in bras and I do not, technically speaking here, have a defibrillator implanted anywhere.

Drawback No. Three: Retrieval. On the rare occasion my phone signals the telemarketers are once again flaunting the FCC’s do-not-call rule, I have to get to it to answer it. Because I am a thoughtful, discrete 2016-type person I do not use one of those bizarre in-ear devices for speaking remotely. These devices make the user look as though he is having an animated conversation with himself. This, just like a Siri monolog about thongs, results in people’s shooting dirty looks and moving rapidly away. My phone does not support any high tech accessories. My phone barely supports incoming calls. Retrieving the phone entails feeling around under my shirt and springing the phone loose. Feeling around under one’s shirt in public is behavior Miss Manners would condemn in the strongest possible language. Possibly with a lengthy prison sentence and undying ridicule.