This Collection

After stripping down the styrofoam ceiling earlier I deemed myself fit to clean the closet as well. I brought back a bag worth of t-shirts from South Africa. Combine those with piles of shirts from the Republican National Convention and my travels around the mid-Atlantic last year and I realized I had more shirts to sort than I thought.

I only keep about 90-100 shirts "on display" at once, and many of those rarely make it out of the stack. You would be embarrassed to wear a homemade U2 shirt or Madonna concert tee, wouldn't you?


As boxes of unwearable keepsakes from the past few years go into storage, these shirts offer immediate reminders of music interests, trends, and attitudes back to middle school. The only rule is that each of the 100 shirts must fit me; everything too small (or in the case of my XXL phase in eighth grade, too large) is folded up and put in a separate closet. The old shirts ain't going anywhere soon.

Instead of combing through eBay in twenty years searching for "vintage" shirts, I figure I should save the effort and hold onto the old ones. If saving old books (most of which you won't get around to rereading) is so accepted, the ability to step back into the spirit of a shirt acquired at a special part of your life seems reasonable. Each time you bought a shirt you screened everything from size to color to message to fit; that's a lot of interesting decision-making to consider some years out.

Right now I'm wearing a brand new orange t-shirt adorned with a large cartooned Baltimore Oriole logo. Soon to be my new team in my new adopted town. When I don't feel like wearing it all the time, I know it'll add some wonderful color to the middle shelf.