Eulogy
In honor of the recent poll results, I thought I would eulogize one of the contenders for "oldest piece of regularly worn clothing" in my closet.
One of the low-lights of my eighth grade year (we are talking so low it could be considered subterranean), was PE. The first week of class we were all obliged to shell out $15 or so for a T-shirt and draw-string shorts in eggplant purple and school bus yellow. Then a TA, far too sadistically, printed everybody's first initial and last name so that at no point could you claim the ugly items to not be your own.
And we were instructed to wear these items every day, implored to wash them every week, and everyone... boy, girl, prep, loser, or wannabe... could look almost identical in the gray freezing fog of a day not created for running a mile. I frequently suspect that the eggplant and school bus combination was not only a pitiful attempt to approximate the school colors, but a planned strategy to bring similar results as do orange jumpsuits.
But when cotton is worn daily and washed weekly, it gets soft and snuggly. This, of course, makes it an even bigger insult to wear it through torturous events like volleyball, dodge ball, and softball. But all things come to an end, even prison sentences.
At the time I would have gladly seen the end of the eggplant school bus, but my name still blackened the front, and the clothes were too intact to justify burying them.
So they became pajamas. And they've gotten softer and friendlier in the dozen years since then. At some point my name wore off, at another point the draw-string stretched to need double and triple knotting... and now holes, great and big and gaping.
I think I can bury them now. The only problem is none of my other pajamas come close to the same comfort.
One of the low-lights of my eighth grade year (we are talking so low it could be considered subterranean), was PE. The first week of class we were all obliged to shell out $15 or so for a T-shirt and draw-string shorts in eggplant purple and school bus yellow. Then a TA, far too sadistically, printed everybody's first initial and last name so that at no point could you claim the ugly items to not be your own.
And we were instructed to wear these items every day, implored to wash them every week, and everyone... boy, girl, prep, loser, or wannabe... could look almost identical in the gray freezing fog of a day not created for running a mile. I frequently suspect that the eggplant and school bus combination was not only a pitiful attempt to approximate the school colors, but a planned strategy to bring similar results as do orange jumpsuits.
But when cotton is worn daily and washed weekly, it gets soft and snuggly. This, of course, makes it an even bigger insult to wear it through torturous events like volleyball, dodge ball, and softball. But all things come to an end, even prison sentences.
At the time I would have gladly seen the end of the eggplant school bus, but my name still blackened the front, and the clothes were too intact to justify burying them.
So they became pajamas. And they've gotten softer and friendlier in the dozen years since then. At some point my name wore off, at another point the draw-string stretched to need double and triple knotting... and now holes, great and big and gaping.
I think I can bury them now. The only problem is none of my other pajamas come close to the same comfort.
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