Reflections of Keeping Old T-shirts

Going to shake things up here a bit, and switch genres... My wife's comment about needing new clothes today made me think of this piece, which was written last year and is one poem in a collection I have tentatively titled Beer at the Ballpark (and Other Poems for Guys). I think it has potential to actually sell - at least that's what some people in my writer's group said - if I could manufacture the energy to write more of them. (Right now, I have about 15.)

My wife said she needed some new tshirts - that last year, she threw out a lot of her old ones. It's not that the old ones didn't fit anyone, they were just old, she said. I believe she called them "ratty" and "yellowing."

It takes a lot for me to throw out an old shirt, especially if at one time it had significant value. I wore a tshirt today, for instance, that has at least three small holes in it. It is probably 10 years old. I am not ready to retire it.

I happen to like gray t-shirts. I may have 15 of them. This is a poem about a hypothetical situation in which a woman starts questioning whether a guy's shirt should be trashed.


“His Gray T-Shirt”

Don’t tell a guy that his favorite
gray t-shirt is getting old and has holes
and should be the rag he uses
to check the oil in his car with because he’s
not stupid, he knows this already,
and is seeking therapy about this one
thing right now. Some shrink is making
$80 an hour just listening to the stories
associated with this shirt – how,
for instance, the Red Sox won their
first World Series in 86 years while he wore it
and other sports superstitions –
and counseling the guy to cope with the fact that
the shirt has no collar, and that dime-
sized holes are becoming quarter-sized holes,
and no sober man wants to show off his nipples.

The man is keeping the shirt because he needs to.

If you want to know how to truly help him, you say
nothing, and just permit the ghastly sight until the shirt
disintegrates in the washing machine, which it will, or
suspiciously becomes lost after months of searching,
which you will help him do. He will recover
after a Ceremony of Loss and a new
gray t-shirt to break in.

Numerous times, you will want to express your
disapproval about it and the others
like it. But the trick is to be passive,
accept his attire, because it’s your guy’s
connection to his past, and if there’s one thing
you shouldn’t do, it’s damage that. There’s a larger
purpose for old, torn tshirts than you can realize - even he
doesn’t completely understand it, so don’t
engage him in a conversation about it.
You wouldn’t want him questioning you
about your purses, now,
would you?