T-shirt Timeline

Recently I've gone on an IKEA binge, buying lots of dressers for our bedroom so we finally have room for all our clothes that we never wear. I really feel like I wear about 25% of what I actually own. I call it the "top layer" syndrome. I basically only wear the clothes that are on the top layers of my dresser drawers. I have no idea what lurks beneath.

Until now, that is. Getting new dressers means getting rid of the old - which means going through everything and deciding what to keep and what to toss. I always say I'm going to get rid of most of it since the top layer is all I really use anyway. Inevitably I start going through the clothes and realize - hey! Look at all these great clothes I have and never wear! Let me save these and put them . . . in the bottom of the drawer.

This morning I tackled my t-shirt drawer. Every time I go through this drawer I always have the same thought - Why do I have so many t-shirts and why can I not seem to get rid of them? Today I was determined to clear it out once and for all.

As I pulled out t-shirt after wrinkled t-shirt, I realized why I have so many. As the t-shirts piled up around my, my life flashed before my eyes. The last twenty years of my life were reflected in a jumble of t-shirts. Here's what I found and what they reminded me of, in no particular order . . .

Barenaked Ladies: When John and I first got together, we loved going to Barenaked Ladies concerts. After one concert in the late 1990s at Merriweather Post Pavilion, we were waiting in our car to get out of the parking lot and I bought a t-shirt from some guy who was hawking them for $10 apiece. The front of the shirt states "Alcohol - My Permanent Accessory". Hmmm . . .

Best Mommy In The World: When Jack was about two years old, John and his brother bought t-shirts for me, my mom and their mom all with "Simply the Best (fill in the blank) in the World" written on them for Mother's Day. I remember they got my grandmother a bouquet of flowers and she kept complaining that she hadn't gotten a t-shirt, which was funny because she never wore t-shirts.

Waterfront Restaurant, Dewey Beach: One of the original shirts from the former Waterfront at Dewey - where my friends and I would hang out on summer weekends when we were in our mid-20s, drinking Dewey Devils and eating spiced shrimp that would turn our fingers orange and leave us with Old Bay seasoning caked under our fingernails. This was usually our first stop on a list of bar hops that included Jam Session at the Bottle N Cork followed by late nights at the Starboard, followed by Sunday morning brunch at the Starboard. You get the picture.

Turkey Trot, Race for the Cure, Out and Back Party Run etc:  Race shirts galore. These are not the technical racing shirts but the plain cotton t-shirts that come with some of the less pricy, less competitive runs. I'm not sure what to do with all these race shirts but I can't bring myself to get rid of them. They make me feel like I accomplished something: my first 5K, my first race with my son, my first experience with raising money for ALS. They're almost like little trophies. Maybe I can make them into a quilt - if I knew how to make quilts.

AXP Beach Party: This is an old one. About a month after I met John on Spring Break my friends and I road-tripped down to his college to attend their fraternity beach party, which basically meant they covered their basement floor with a foot of sand and rolled in a few kegs. My roommate was dating one of his fraternity brothers and so we ended up jumping around the beer soaked sand in their fraternity house, drinking cheap beer and acting like typical college students. Somehow I ended up with a t-shirt that commemorated the event and I still have it. Check it out . . .

It's so strange to look at this since we met in March of 1993 yet it took until January of 1997 for us to actually get together. I will never throw this shirt away.

There were lots of other t-shirts in that drawer commemorating all kinds of other things - a trip to New Orleans, various Ukrainian summer camps I've attended with my kids, college shirts, etc. But the one that means the most is the one I've never worn. It has been in my drawer since October of 2011.

Bouncing Tigger
John and I spent part of our honeymoon in Orlando and bought several souvenirs to bring home to our family. One of those souvenirs was an extra large gray t-shirt with a joyful bouncing Tigger on it. We gave this shirt to my dad, who wore it numerous times over the years, most likely while he was doing yard work or some other home improvement project. But the last time he wore it is one I will never forget. On the morning of the day on which he passed away, his home health aide convinced him to change his shirt. She put the Tigger t-shirt on him and that is what he was wearing when the ambulance came to transport him to hospice. I remember when I saw him wearing it I got a strange feeling, knowing that I'd given him that shirt so many years ago. By the time I arrived at the hospice, he'd been bathed and changed into a hospital gown, so he was no longer wearing the shirt.

Days later as we sat in my parents' house I noticed the Tigger shirt freshly washed and neatly folded on top of a pile of clean laundry. I picked it up, looked at my Mom and said "I'm taking this shirt." She just nodded. She understood.

Out of the twenty plus shirts that I pulled out of the drawer this morning, only three ended up in the pile for Goodwill. The rest were carefully folded and put back in the drawer. I may never wear the Tigger shirt, but I like knowing that it's there.