A Good Read - Always Wear Clean Underwear

There's a great book, "Always wear clean underwear!" written by Marc Gellman. It is a wonderful resource for parents to read with kids and to instill values in them. I used some stories from the book during the Orientation Week when I was teaching in my ex-school. When I first saw this book, the title caught my attention. It is written in a conversational, easy to understand and humourous manner. Even my upper primary kids loved the stories. An AWESOME read!

For kids and parents who are interested to read this book, here's a piece of good news. You can find it in the National Library.

Here's an extract adapted from one of the stories:

Why do your parents care about your underwear? Nobody sees your underwear, and yet parents always tell kids to wear clean underwear.

Answer #1: Dirty underwear is full of germs and we don't want those germs jumping off your underwear and onto you.

Answer #2: You should always wear clean underwear because if you ever get into an accident on the way to school or on the way home from school and an ambulance has to take you to the hospital and the doctors in the emergency room have to take your pants off, if they see that you're wearing dirty underwear then they'll think that we're bad parents because we don't wash your underwear. (Take note that this is a run-on sentence from the book. A chance to incorporate the usage of appropriate punctation. Heehee.)

Apart from these answers, there must be some big deep reason behind this. I think I figured it out. The big reason for wearing clean underwear is to teach you this: What people don't see about you should be just as good as what people do see about you. 


We all try to look good outside. The hard part is to look good inside. 

If you pretend to be somebody's friend but say bad things about him or her to other people, then it's a lot like wearing dirty underwear. If you are nice to your brothers or sisters when your parents are around but hit them and make them miserable when your parents are gone, then you're wearing dirty underwear.


The hardest thing in life is to be the same way deep down as you are on top. If you are always pretending to be something you aren't, if you never say what you mean, if you never do what you say, then you'll be unhappy and people will stay away from you because they don't want to have a friend who is clean only on the outside.