I have this sweatshirt from the 1992 Shakespeare Festival that I’ve worn so much the sleeve ends are basically rags and the front has bleach spots, that weird “great stuff” insulation crap on it and other stains that I can’t identify. I still wear it. I will wear it until the shoulder seams give way and there is no longer anyway to hang it off my bod. Even confronted with a host of new shirts I will take this one every time. I just LOVE it. I have a pair of ripped up, no butt, jeans I feel the same way about. Anyone else?
I have one shirt…I call it my lucky shirt. I don’t know what it is…I have been kissed by three guys, so far. They each first kissed me when I was wearing the shirt. The second guy, I thought, “Whoa, odd coincedence.” Third guy, I thought, “Shit. This is just weird.”
So, I don’t plan on ever getting rid of that one any time soon. It may be my only hope…
Q: Did you hear about the agnostic insomniac dyslexic?
A: He stayed up all night, wondering if there’s really a dog.
Pixoid, were you wearing anything besides the shirt? That might explain it…
I have an old 10,000 Maniacs t-shirt from 1993 that I’m rather fond of, despite it’s near non-existant status from repeated washings. Also, a “Don’t Panic!” Hitchhiker’s guide t-shirt which was my lucky test shirt throughout the latter part of high school and in college. I refuse to get rid of either!
“I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
Pixoid – yo, please, describe this shirt! Is it a T or a sweat or what? Man, give me more info! Mine isn’t lucky or anything, just my favorite around the house. Like if I was gonna meet one of you live, God knows, I’d probably be wearing that shirt! Just because I’M ALWAYS wearing that shirt!
Jophiel – okay, now you’ve brought up something I can get into. We did silk screening in highschool. I would take old T-shirts and print the following on them:
Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is… or anything you can think of from “Hitchhiker’s Guide”. My teacher didn’t know what in the hell I was talking about. I still, to this day, some 10 years later, have these shirts!
Yeah, I was wearing pants…jeans, corduroys, etc. They varied, which is why I’m blaming it on the shirt.
Anyway, it’s not like I get kissed every time I wear it; I wear it every time I get kissed. Important difference.
The shirt: Black, double-v neck (shallow v, and then a steeper one in the middle of that), lettuce-edged sleeves (the ends are kinda…crinkly), flower binding near the neck…it’s rather distinctive, and looks like it’s from India (my friends guess that I brought it back). J C Penney’s all the way.
But I do have a favourite lounging sweatshirt…really soft, really comfortable…as I said once, “It feels like a hug.”
I have a sweatshirt that I love, and it’s irreplaceable.
It’s from a clothing shop in DC called “Commander Salamander.”
They sold all kinds of funky clothes, many carrying a “salamander” as part of the design.
Mine showed a salamander standing up wearing a pea jacket and ushanka, pipe in mouth, and the caption “KOMRADE SALAMANDER IS WATCHING YOU.”
The “M’s” were Cyrillic characters (their character for “SH”) that looked sorta like “M.” And the “R’s” of course were the familiar backwards “R,” which is actually the Russian character for the sound “YA.”
Years and years of washing have caused it to shrink severely. (Yes–it shrank.) I can still wear it, but it’s not as roomy as I prefer, so I don’t. And it also has some permanent stains (they look like oil) that I have no idea when or where they occurred.
So, over New Year’s I was in DC to see the van Gogh exhibit, and I went back to get a new souvenir (I collect souvenir t-shirts/sweats wherever I go).
Nope. The store had completely changed. It was still there, and the name was the same–but the merchandise was dramatically different.
It was a sex shop.
And if there were any neat salamander clothes, I failed to find them.
I have a Pink Floyd T-shirt that my brother gave me for Christmas about ten years ago. It has bleach spots, holes hither and thither within the giant pig design, holes in the shoulder seams…
I love that shirt.
I used to have a t-shirt with a picture of Andy Warhol silk-screened on the front. The seams were in the same condition as the PF shirt, but still wearable. I had to retire it when the small hole above the silk-screen (is it silk-screening?) grew large enough that the graphic began to fold over itself. What a sad, sad day that was…
“Excrement. That is what I think of J. Evans Pritchard, PhD.” --Robin Williams, Dead Poets Society
I have an old Tshirt from Ball State that I just love. It almost got me arrested in Ft. Lauderdale. It a huge “U” with “Ball” written inside it. Okay, it was Spring Break and the Ft. Lauderdale cops apparently hadn’t heard of this fine institution of higher learning and assumed the message was a personal invitation.
OK, this was a few years ago, before the explosion of mind-boggling obscene Tshirts.
It’s faded to pale gray, the seams are white and it lost whatever shape it ever had years ago. And I just love it.
I have two sweatshirts and a blanket like that. The one sweatshirt used to by my sister’s, then it ended up with my dad, and now I’ve stolen it. It’s light grey, with a hood and front pocket. It’s so well worn that it’s light and ultra soft. The cuffs are torn and ragged. But I don’t care.
The other sweatshirt is a white Cotton Ginny that I picked up at a used clothing store for $6. I wear it all the time. I wore it all through mechanics class, so it has two or three small oil stains on it. The cuffs are torn. Mom keeps begging me to throw it away, or at least not wear it outside the yard. Not gonna happen, my friend.
And then there’s my blankey. I’ve had it for years. It’s a soft cotton, kinda heavy, and warm. it used to be orange on one side and green on the other. But it’s faded to sort of a peach and bluish grey. When we first got our dog, she chewed a big hole right in the middle of the blanket. It’s been stitched up several times, but keeps splitting again. My bum gets cold sometimes, but I love my blankey.
I had this one denim-looking shirt (long sleeves, button up, thatsortathing), that I wore until I’d worn a hole in the right elbow (Don’t ask me how, but I do that to EVERY long sleeved shirt/sweater that I have…). So I chopped off the sleeves, and now it’s a vest.
Now a hole is forming in the back…looks like it’ll eventually split into 2 identical pieces. I think I’ll make a necktie out of it when that happens.
My Oingo Boingo “Dio de los Muertos” shirt from the Dark at the end of the tunnel tour…
I wore it until it had lots of little holes, then i continued to wear it with a long sleeved shirt under it, it has now been retired to a drawer (until the evil one who banned it isn’t looking :))
Um… I hope you mean “Dia de los Muertos” … Odd how one letter changes the whole meaning.
–Tim
We are the children of the Eighties. We are not the first “lost generation” nor today’s lost generation; in fact, we think we know just where we stand - or are discovering it as we speak.
I have a magic shirt, a girl friend bought it for me long ago, nothing ever happened with her, but for years it brought me unimaginable luck. I am eight years older now, and that shirt hangs in my closet, unworn, but ready in case of an emergency. Also, I have an old fraternity shirt that I still lounge around in all the time, my girlfriend hates it, I love it, despite its fraying and wrinkles (the shirt, not the girlfriend…er uh, I love them both but the shirt has the wrinkles…nevermind)
The ocean of liquor, I drank to forget her, is gonna kill me, but I’ll drink till then.- George Jones Still Doin Time
I have a blue paisley button-up shirt that I used to wear ALL THE TIME. I got it used from my father-in-law, hated it when I first got it, grew to like it, then wore it non-stop. It’s faded to a light blue in front, but is still dark in other places. A few months ago I caught a button hole on a nail, and ripped a four inch hole in the front. Now it sits in my closet. I’m just gonna’ leave it there for awhile and let it talk to its other friends (it gets along very well with that 1974 Grateful Dead tour shirt that is held together with dirt and sweat). I don’t have the heart to toss it out.
I have an old shirt from the now basically defunct Arizona jeans company. You can actually read news print through it even with it folded over once. I never wear it now, it’s almost dust, it has no shoulders, and you can see-- with perfect definition-- my nipples. In startling colour!
Thank God I’m not the only one with a weird shirt fetish! And, yes, as I look down, I’m wearing my favorite right now. Fresh off the laundry line today… mmmmm like wearing a big hug!
Tengu – I guess once the sleeves fall off this one I’ll go for the vest. And then the tie!
Ophanim – you never wear it but you still hang on to it? That’s sweet!
I have a dark blue shirt that I got secondhand. It’s a man’s shirt made of some heavy, unidentifiable fabric (labels are long gone), and it works almost as well as a jacket. I wait for the weather to cool off so I can wear it, then I wear it to death until it gets hot again.
It’s still in pretty good shape, though all the buttons have been replaced and there’s one little bleach spot that I sewed an extra button over. I love that shirt to pieces; I just feel good when I’m in it.
When I left McDonald’s, they let me keep my shirt that advertised [2.99 Extra Value Meals 1.99 Breakfast Value Meals**. I also have a shirt from my friend’s now-defunct band, with a “tour schedule” listed on the back: Elysian Fields, Sea of Tranquility, and so on. Mr. Rilch had two t-shirts made for me with Jim’s Journal panels on them. If you’re familiar with JJ (and the complete anthology just came out!), they’re “I noticed that our kitchen walls are kind of porous” and “He said, 'It’s not my copy store; I can only care so much”. I had a Gilley’s shirt but somebody stole it.
Remember, I’m pulling for you; we’re all in this together.
—Red Green
Yeah, I was wearing pants…jeans, corduroys, etc. They varied, which is why I’m blaming it on the shirt.