Today I was at the gym and I full-on ripped my underwear. Like SpongeBob SquarePants-style. Like Contact-rip in the space/time continuum-style.

Let me set the scene. The place: Planet Fitness. The muscle group: legs and abs. The perpetrator: a pair of navy-blue boxers from GAP. The victim: me, and my butt.

I walked into the gym and went to the back section where the weights/douchebags are and grabbed a dumbbell. I managed to finish one exercise—lunges, because I want that tush—when I readjust my stance and frame my feet to begin squats.

Literally, I square off my feet and dip into the first squat when my underwear busts open like a jack-in-the-box with an audible pop! noise. I have headphones in and I’m listening to a podcast, but the force of the tear is so visceral that it startles me. I get out of the squat and turn slowly, praying feverishly that the tear was my boxers and not my shorts. My butt rounds the corner and I can see that, for now, the tear has been restricted to my underwear.

With a new, uncomfortably breezy derriere, I try to finish at least the first set of squats, but after four quick dips, it’s becoming abundantly clear that unless I want to do a strip-tease for the elderly and housewives who are with me at Planet Fitness on a Monday at 11 a.m., I should move on to something else.

There are certain pivotal moments in a person’s life. The first time they fall in love (with a person/inanimate object/food). The first time they drive a car (successfully—which for me was not the first time as “drive a car”). The first time they shit on the side of a mountain while on a six-mile hike (Done and done). And the first time that their butt proves to be too much for inferior underwear and rips in a public place.

With this newest life-marker, I realized several things. One, that clothing is nothing more than a consumerist façade. Two, that clothing is nothing more than a consumerist façade and without that consumer façade, you feel super-duper nakey. Three, that even though no one can tell that you just ripped your underwear from taint-to-waistband, you’ll walk around for the next half hour being extremely paranoid that everyone totally can.

I also had the intense internal debate of whether or not I should leave the gym that moment and properly deal with my shame. Here’s how that situation went down.

***

ME (leggy auburn millennial with 6/10 skin and an ass that won’t quit): (does single squat and causes a seismic rip that will affect ecosystems for years to come)

SHAME: You need to get out of here, quick.

ME: What?

SHAME: You just ripped your underwear, you freak. You’re basically streaking rn.

ME: No but I just got here. I need to werk out my body.

SHAME: Just say “work.” Don’t add the “e.” it’s juvenile.

ME: I didn’t add the “e.”

SHAME: Yes you did. Sharon, can you go back in the transcript?

SHARON (court stenographer): “I need to werk out my body.”

SHAME (rightfully vindicated): No “e”, huh? You’re disgusting.

ME (shamed for the “e”): I drove all the way over here.

SHAME: Why are you doing this to us? Your underwear is ripped; this isn’t a gay 1990s porno. This is To Catch A Predator. Why are you Jim Henson-ing yourself?

ME: The creator of the Muppets?

SHAME: Who?

ME: Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets.

SHAME: Who am I thinking of then? Sharon, who am I thinking of?

SHARON (Googles it but she’s on a BlackBerry, so it takes forever): Chris Hansen?

SHAME: Chris Hansen, yes. You’re Chris Hansen-ing yourself.

ME: I can’t take you seriously if you can’t tell apart Chris Hansen and Jim Henson. We’re done here.

Fin.

Fun fact: there is a “Jim Hansen” who is a professor at Columbia University, researcher in climatology and a climate activist for mitigating the effects of global warming. Well, I guess it’s more of a “fact” than a “fun fact.”

There’s not a grosser, more awkwardly slutty feeling than working out with ripped underwear. I imagine that there are people who completely get off on stuff like that, but I’m as pure and virginal as the driven snow and I just dealt with greater-than-normal swampass.

In other news, I just finished watching the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones. I almost thought about doing a recap, but GoT is literally so confusing that I have no idea what’s happening/what has happened/who anyone is, so it would be a lot of me going, “And then Red Beard guy, omg what is his name, bite the throat of that other guy—is he new or should I have known who he is?—and Jon Snow basically got a deep-tissue charcoal scrub, but instead of charcoal it was mud and the blood of his enemies.” Wait, that sounds fun. Not the mud and blood part, but the recap. Regardless, it’s not happening. But I’ve been watching that, and reading. A. ton.

You know you’ve become a complete lost cause when you’re staying up late requesting books from your library. I’ve fallen so far.