T-shirt tales? Because every t-shirt tells a story, don't it.
And I have so very many of them. Shirts. And stories. ---- Whaaaaat??
PS In the process, blogger did some nasty things to my captions. Sorry.
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| 2017: Rescued briefly from the rag bag for its final photo. Little holes and rips all over. Good old t-shirt. |
T-shirts as a kid? Don't recall ever having one. Certainly nothing enhanced with writing or pictures. Clothing was for wearing, right? I don't recall anyone else my age wearing that kind of T, either. They started to come into their own as mini-billboards only a few years before[1]. Mom disapproved. Clothing is for wearing!
My high school hosted a Sadie Hawkins Dance[2] every year, where girls asked boys instead of the normal order. My freshman year, friend Carol and I had our eyes on, gasp!, a couple of sophomores or juniors! The first one I asked said yes. I barely knew him--a friend of a friend--but he was cute and sweet.
In my mid teens, I got a small allowance at home of five dollars (equivalent to about $33 in 2020[3]), for which I had to do certain chores. Plus I started babysitting, giving me enough wherewithall to buy things other than candy, Bazooka gum[4], and DC comic books[5].
So then--for that dance, you were supposed to come in matching outfits. What ,what, what to do? We had no experience yet of what others did, so we thought that matching t-shirts would be plenty. She had one or two fun men's pocket t-shirts with horizontal pinstripes[6]. (Ha, little did I know about how much more fun one could get with Ts!) Bought at the neighborhood Mervyn's[7]. We went down together and, wow, a wide array of colors. I wanted them all. But, instead, I got a dark blue with light blue pinstripes to match Carol's, which we'd wear for the dance, and a bright blue one with red pinstripes because I love love LOVE that color.
That I recall, they were my first-ever TSHIRT t-shirts, not merely CLOTHING t-shirts. Bought with my own money.
Loved them. Wore them out eventually, which is possibly the best compliment that clothing can hope for. I'm lucky to have a few photos of the partnership between me and those shirts.
[Aside--I'm pretty sure that's why we got the matching shirts. Hope I'm not confusing the whole story with the SHD where we spent long, long hours sewing matching long-sleeved button-down shirts in a fun blue and purple pattern. I *think* that was the following year.]
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| The dark blue one. The friend on the right bought the matching t-shirt. I didn't play the bugle, Phil [8] didn't play drums--but Carol did play guitar. Fooling around at my house my high school freshman year.
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| 6 years later, my junior year of college. The bright blue shirt. Fooling around with friends in the lounge on our dorm floor. I have no idea what was on the board or who wrote it, but I strongly suspect that I might have had a part in it. |
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Footnotes:
(All are just for fun; you don't need them to read the post.)
[1] T-shirt history at Wikipedia "In the 1960s, printed T-shirts gained popularity for self-expression as well for advertisements, protests, and souvenirs."
[2] Sadie Hawkins Dance at Wikipedia
[5] DC Comics at Wikipedia - I'm a long-time Batman fan
[8] Phil got in touch with me five years back, after decades. We had dinner. We said we'd do it again. A couple of months later it was too late. A smart, funny guy with whom I spent a lot of time mostly in Junior High years.
I'd have had a hard time parting with that shirt. I could tell you didn't play the horn...but it was a good attempt! :) :) :)
ReplyDeleteMy problem is that I always have a hard time parting with shirts that I like and that have memories associated with them. That would be all 150 more or less. Every few years I go through and do pull out ones that, when it's their turn, I say, ummm, not today--more than once. And give them away. Last time before I did that, I was clever enough to take pix, although they're iffy pix. Still, at least they exist.
DeleteWhile hunting through older photos lookng for examples of me actually wearing identifiable t-shirts, I've found photos of ones I had forgotten thatI used to have! Which is cool, too.
But ifI didn't prune the t-shirt tree sometimes, I'd never be able to buy newer and more relevant ones. :-) And I don't intend to die with more than 6 drawers of tightly-packed Ts. I'm sure my heirs will think that 6 is wayyy more than enough.
PS I eventually did learn to get something recognizable out of a trumpet. And actual different tones out of the bugle. But my lips were never really horn lips. And barely reed lips. :-)
DeleteI have two dresser drawers full of tshirts. I try not to get more..but it's hard.
DeleteRight?! I have to talk very severely to myself that I told myself already NO MORE T-SHIRTS. So how many have I added in 2020? When I haven't even been able to go anywhere or do anything?! 3! And it's not yet August. Four last year. It's an illness!
Delete