Earlier this week, my subpar grades caused me to have a mini mental breakdown. Instead of dealing with my problems, I decided to nap. In my dream, I met Stephen Hawking (I’m all about mysterious science), and he gave me a signed copy of A Brief History of Time and said “Happy Hanukkah, Hazel!”

Upon waking up, I realized that my dream was fairly unrealistic. Depressing as it was to think that Stephen Hawking would never give me a signed copy of, well, anything on any gift-giving holiday, the dream did get me thinking about Christmas. (I may be Buddhist, but they never made any Charlie Brown TV specials on the Festival of the Tooth, did they?) So in lieu of doing homework, I started to compile my Christmas shopping list, which currently looks something like this: Josie: argyle sweater, Becca: Edward Cullen water bottle, JulieAnn: n/a.

JulieAnn, though one of my best friends, is very hard to shop for. She doesn’t like much. Except sex. So, in search of good gift ideas, I made a trip down to one of Ithaca’s sex shops.

Amidst all the skimpy lingerie and decks of dirty playing cards, I found the one item that could fascinate me enough to produce 800 words: edible underwear.

My favorite part about edible underwear (other than the fact that it is edible) is that it comes in so many different forms. There are edible jockstraps and flavored boxers for men. For women they have crotch-less gummy panties (which men love because it puts their two favorite things together: gummy worms and female genitalia) and thongs that are only slightly more elaborate than the candy necklaces of childhood.

In my honest opinion, edible underwear is a misunderstood and somewhat underrated accessory. Admittedly, I don’t have excessive experience with it, but I will say that if you ever have the chance to wear some for a certain someone special (or maybe someone not so special, but whom you plan on fornicating with anyway) — do it. Yet, as big of a fan as I am of the “wear underwear that you can eat too” phenomenon, I do have a bone to pick with the inventors of edible underwear — you can’t wear it all day.

I am, by no means, saying that I would want to wear my candy underwear throughout a day filled with lectures and discussion sections, prelims, pop quizzes, bus rides through campus and, of course, lunch at “Club Trill” with my roomie. However, if I am meeting up with my man of the week, I would much rather wear the same pair of underwear in anticipation of what’s to come than carry around some edible underwear in my purse all day, only to change into it five minutes before meeting said man.

So what’s a girl to do? Leave a few packages of gummy underwear in her nightstand and hope that she only gets lucky at her apartment? Well, my lovely readers, you can keep some in your nightstand if you’d like, but under no circumstances should you carry edible underwear in your purse. Why? Because of a bad experience that I am now going to share with you.

A few months ago, as I prepared for a long day of shopping with my mother, I thought, “well, I am meeting up with David later …” So I threw a pair of edible panties in my purse.

Everything would’ve been fine had my mother not had a headache that afternoon. Just as we walked out of Anthropologie, she said, “Sweetie, my head feels like it is going to explode, do you mind going into the next store alone while I sit down for a bit?” I did mind — which, in retrospect, was my big mistake. Being the loving daughter that I am, I told her to look in my purse for some aspirin while I went off to find some water.

I came back with a cup of water to find my mother with a mortified expression on her face. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that she found more than aspirin in my purse. And that, ladies and gentlemen (but really, this piece of advice is just for the ladies), is why you should never keep edible underwear in your handbag.

So if you ever find yourself in the position to choose between wearing edible underwear or not — wear it. I just bought myself some peppermint panties — all for the sake of having some holiday spirit, of course! But remember the moral of the story: Never let your parents catch you with your tasty undergarments. That’s just awkward.