Shirt Stories

Get it? I'm implying that these anecdotes will be both short and of low quality.

So I have a tendency to hang onto things. I'm a bit of a 'pack rat' if you will, and recently stumbled on an interesting book about how to minimize your possessions. It recommends getting your entire category of possessions into one place, and you keep whatever makes you happy. And the rest of it can be let go. This last part is hard, because I find I keep things which are tied to a memory or sentiment, and I worry that getting rid of them will somehow destroy those thoughts and feelings altogether.

Most of my discarding was surprisingly easy (I figure I bagged up half of all my clothes). But I had four shirts that I really struggled with. Alas, they were either ill-fitting and/or falling apart, and I knew I didn't actually want to wear them so much as just appreciate what they represented.

I decided to get rid of them, though. But before I did, I shot some quick pictures. I figured I should record their impressions, lest those memories leak away like a fistfull of sand.

Communist Party
My brother got this one for me for Christmas one year. It was goofy, and it generally got a lot of good reactions from people who saw me wearing it. A lot of "Hey, I have that shirt too!" It was also probably one of the brightest/most colourful shirts I had. I need more of those.

Cowboy Bebop
This was the very first thing I purchased with my very first credit card. Yeah, it's just a dumb anime shirt, but it nevertheless reminded me of being all growed up. I liked the colour of it (a chocolate brown t-shirt? Awesome!), as well as the subject matter. In fact, I just finished re-watching the series recently. I took my time with it rather than binging in a hurry, and appreciated lots of small things I had missed before.

Bad Altitude
As a graduation present, one of my uncle's bought me a free introductory flight lesson. Me and my folks drove out to a small airstrip on the outskirts of the big city, and while waiting for the tiny Cessna to be prepped, we puttered around the gift shop. I saw this shirt and laughed, and then went for a flight. I even got to take the stick, and we puttered around Vancouver's coast for an hour or so before returning. It was beautiful and the sense of freedom up in that cloudless, sunny summer's day was exhilarating. After I had returned, my parents presented me with the shirt. It was clearly too large, but I wore it anyways.

I don't stumble back on that memory very often, and that shirt was really my only gateway back to that adventure. I flew a plane!

Half-Life 2 Deathmatch
Probably the only garment that got me more attention than the Communist Party one. Except with this, it was mostly along the lines of "Is that a guy getting hit in the head by a toilet?".

I bought two of these - one for my brother, and one for myself. I think it was for his birthday, and I was missing him after moving away from home 6 months prior. We were gaming buddies for most of our time growing up: we could only afford one gaming computer (I bought the parts with my summer job money and he built it), so while one of us was playing the other was watching. Those were good times.

Our family refers to them as 'The Toilet Shirts'. I always liked the goofy image and the peculiar burgundy hue. I think my brother might still have his and uses it as a grubby-around-the-house shirt. The collar and fringes on mine were quite tattered, the fabric was thin and stretched, and it just smelled like... Old. I probably haven't worn it in a year or two.

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I'd rather these shirts get some actual use from someone in need rather than living a lonely life as a crumpled bundle of cloth in the back corner of my dresser. Time to smile and move on. Thanks for holding onto my memories for me.
-Cril