We aren’t able to get together with friends and family this holiday season, but I recently remembered back to a time when we were regularly stopping in on people we love around this time of year. On one such visit, I got a fantastic belly laugh, and an even better life lesson.
We went to see friends in their new home, and when we arrived, the husband, a very high-powered executive, opened the front door wearing a Black Sabbath concert T-shirt. I started cracking up and said, “What are you wearing?”
He smiled and said, “Best concert I ever went to.” He then went on to explain that in the course of moving, he came across his souvenir T-shirts, from all periods in his life – concerts, college, movie premieres, etc., and realized that he had moved them from house to house over the years, always leaving them in the same box, and for what? So his kids could throw them out after he died?
So, he decided that whenever the occasion called for a T-shirt (like a warm December day in Los Angeles cooking out with friends), he would wear one of the T-shirts that meant something to him. And when they wore out, he’d lovingly throw them away, rather than leaving it up to his loved ones.
It occurred to me to write this after I got dressed this morning in my “Hampstead International Football Cup” shirt that I got in Jamaica in 1992. Prior to that visit, it had spent all those years in a box, and what precious souvenir deserves that? Plus, I love wearing it. It reminds me of an awesome trip, a sport I love (soccer, in case you weren’t sure), and that it still fits almost 30 years later. Woo-hoo!
Wear the T-shirts you love.
What else are you saving them for?
True enough!