Saturday, February 12, 2011

Me And My Clothes Down By The Schoolyard


Another momentous wardrobe change happened earlier this week: I gave away a pair of six-year-old brown pants so beloved and worn so often that each side pocket had such large holes that my keys usually slid down my leg when I put them inside. For the past year or so, I'd only worn them around the house when I didn't have to carry anything, but I still couldn't bring myself to throw them away.

Just like Jerry and his "Golden Boy," I have lots of trouble letting go of my clothes. They're legends who I just can't bring to throw in the trash, no matter how used they are. Discarding them among tissues and vegetable rinds is too profane a way for their time to end. The compromise I've reached is bringing them to the donations bin at school, reasoning that perhaps someone will see a new use for them and if not, the Goodwill staff can determine whether it's truly time to put them in the trash. The idea of my clothes as trash is too hard to comprehend. Clearly I develop oddly emotional relationships with inanimate objects, though I'm not the only one. When I thought about giving away two of the classic faux-cowboy shirts in my repertoire -- both also with holes in them -- my fiancee objected on the grounds that they're too ingrained in the memories of our closet.

Above is that pair of brown pants, though they look very rumpled here because they'd been hanging in the closet for months until I finally decided to donate them. Trust me, in their prime, they fit extraordinarily well and were a great shade of brown that's very hard to find in pants.

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