They are a nylon-spandex with reinforced tummy control panel support shaping panty that are engineered to hide the fact that I've given birth twice and keeps me from having muffin belly! I have more technology in my jeans than NASA has on the Space Shuttle.

So I am cleaning out my underwear drawer and hubby tells me to throw out the "granny panties." To my horror I inform him, "I don't wear granny panties!" Pointing out that my undergarments are carefully divided into my everyday comfortable nylon-spandex tummy controllers, my full-body Spanx that I wear under dresses, the panties that don't show through my dress pants and the foolishness he buys me every Christmas. There are no granny panties in this drawer!

He picks up a pair of my NASA engineered favourites and insisted, "These are granny panties."

"No they are not!" I protested, "Granny panties are cotton, with flowers all over them and come up to your armpits." I grabbed my daily favourites out of his hand, "These are a modern-day wonder! They hide years of not doing sit-ups every day, cellulite dimples, Big Macs with extra sauce and muffin belly! My grandmother never had panties like this!"

"Call them what you want. They are modern-day granny panties" he informs me.

Putting them back in the drawer I thought, "I would have to join a gym if I ever gave these beauties up."

Anyway it got me to thinking. So I made a visit to a lingerie store. Maybe my underwear drawer did need some updating.

The walls of the store were lined with massive posters of girls who don't eat so they can wear lace without tummy control panels. Looking at their photo-shopped abs didn't inspire me to drop to the floor and do a hundred sit-ups it just made me want to hold them down and force feed them hamburgers.

The 20 something sales girl came over with her size 0 figure and asked if I needed help. "I am looking to update my underwear drawer" I tell her, "I am looking for something that is comfortable but... sexy." I know in her head she's thinking "Sex at her age! Wow good for her!"

First she shows me the wall of underwear designed to turn on perverts. "No, that's not what I am looking for" and we move along to the "School girl" underwear to turn on pedophiles. "That's not me either" I tell her. Then she shows me the "new" line just in that week with the red or black fur around the waistband. "Doesn't that show through your dress pants?" I ask her. "Oh, you don't wear anything over these ones." That ought to make my work day more interesting I thought to myself.

Then she brings out the most dreaded, torturous devise knows to woman... the G-String!

I tried a pair once and I looked like a summo wrestler. Even I laughed when I looked in the mirror. It brought back a memory to me. I was doing a two-day course at university. Before the course started the students were standing around the back of the class chatting and getting to know one another. I met this lovely lady who told me she was 60-years-old and was doing the course out of interest. When it was time to sit down, she sat in front of me and to my horror she was wearing low-cut jeans that revealed a tattooed pair of eyes above her butt cheeks but the worst part, she was wearing a silver thong.

It was like a car crash, I couldn't look away. For seven hours the droopy eyes on her butt watched me, staring at me, scarring me for life. Every time she put up her hand to ask a question her hips shifted and her butt winked at me. The sliver G-string thread around her waist looked like a disco Hippie headband. I would never be able to look at a G-string without thinking of her butt eye balling me.

"I don't do fanny-floss" I told her. I need something comfortable. "Maybe you should go to Walmart" she says. "Maybe you should go to hell" I thought in my head.

With her sales commission still in my wallet, I left and called hubby from my cell phone in the car.

"Ok I am willing to compromise. Wh