So, I quite naturally decided to clean the apartment. I mean, why use the opportunity to the sleep in, have lunch with a friend, or maybe get a massage, when I could get out my spray bottle of Stainless Steel Magic and clean the stove. Yay!
I won’t go into the detail of how I attacked the bathroom with a toothbrush or the various errands I ran in the afternoon, because I’ve already bored you this week once with the logistics behind my double perfect commute. But I will tell you briefly about the Great American Bureau Throw-Away (GABTA) that just occurred.
Due to the lack of closet space in our apartment, I have a bureau that I keep my various non-hanging clothing in. Lately, each drawer has grown so overstuffed that I cannot close it all the way, on account of the various shirts and unders poking out. Just a few days ago, Shawn very nicely pointed out that none of the drawers were shut on my bureau. In fact, she was being so nice about it that she channeled Reilly to bring up the issue:
“Brian, Reilly wants to have a discussion with you about the whole open-drawer thing.”
“Yeah, what did Reilly say?”
“You gotta do something about it. Soon.”
You see, as of last week, it wasn’t just an issue of clothes peeking out anymore. I had just given up altogether on shutting the overstuffed drawers. So, I promised my lovely wife that I would address the issue on the upcoming Thursday of freedom, which is where the GABTA comes into play.
Yesterday, I opened a beer, put on some music, and opened the top drawer. (Well, I didn’t actually open it, since it was already open.) I then proceeded to throw out any socks, undershirts, and unders that were faded, holey, or otherwise worn out. Then, I repeated the process with my T-shirt/shorts drawer, and my pants/collared shirts drawer. I made my decisions quickly, putting the nicely folded newish stuff back in, and throwing the old stuff over by the door where I couldn’t reach it and somehow decide to give some article of clothing one last chance.
Everything was going smoothly until I hit the oldest T-shirt in my drawer. The shirt that Shawn had been begging me to throw away for the past five or so years. The shirt that I loved the most. It was my Keswick Christian Soccer shirt from the summer of ’95, when I played six-aside soccer with my best guy friends Brian, Sid, Phil, and Aaron. (Aaron, if you’re reading this, you’ll remember that summer was the year you broke your leg into about fifty pieces. I’ll never forget that night, buddy.) I threw the shirt over by the door, but before it even landed, I was over picking it back up. Nevermind that the thing was eleven-years-old. It was a classic, with an icon of a soccer player with super ugly soccer hair printed across the left chest. Yet, something inside of me knew it was time to let it go. As much as I loved the shirt, it was faded, stained, stretched, and frankly, downright ugly. I mean, it was an ugly shirt when it was brand new, which was part of the appeal, but somehow, the shirt, in its age, had failed to mature into a retro classic. It had just grown tired. So, with some fanfare, and to Shawn’s great delight, I threw my old friend out:
Jim Bried had a few shirts like that from his early days of marriage. He just recently let them go to the rag pile and/or in the garbage. Talk about old- they were ancient. They were faded and THIN. So thin they were transparrent. (sp).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, good blog.
Donna