Time for New Threads

Ask anyone I know and they’ll tell you—I desperately need new clothes.

Hell, my good friend @momomatics did a three-part series about a sweater I wore every day for almost four months when I was unemployed.

My favorite National Geographic shirt has a hole in each armpit.

The shirt I wore when my seven-year-old was born and still wear now has a bleach spot on the front.

The grey version of that shirt has white elbows from being so worn out.

And the crotch of my only pair of jeans blew out after giving me a good few years of love.

The rest of my wardrobe…a few dress clothes and tons of running shirts which smell like death.

My new job is a bit relaxed. Most days I’ll be able to wear jeans and a dress shirt or polo. So, I had to go shopping.

Shopping for clothes is like asking me to change the neighbor-kid’s diaper while watching Caillou, listening to Oprah, and eating asparagus all at the same time. I loathe shopping.

From the second I hit the front door I feel like everyone’s watching me. Like all the professional shoppers are eyeing my every move and scoring me on a approach to the pants rack, my ability to properly sift through the clearance rack, or understand that stoned washed jeans went out-of-style two decades ago.

My spontaneous decision making shows through when I’m clothes shopping. I’ll see a pair of jeans and quickly go try them on. Then I’ll see another pair of jeans and go try those on. Then another…and another. Within 15 minutes I’m sweating and just walking around the store half nude trying shit on at the racks.

I have a hard time with the jeans being sold these days. (Holy shit I sounded old just then.) They’re cut so damn low. So I keep hiking them up and my “package” gets all bunched up to one side to the point where I look like I’m some kind of pervert douchebag thrusting his junk out to the public.

And of course the wifey took off as soon as we walked in the door so I’m making really bad, spontaneous fashion decisions on my own.

After 20 minutes at Khols I’d picked out two pairs of jeans, some new boxer briefs, and a belt. Thirty minutes later I found the wifey and we bolted to Old Navy – the Mecca of teenage low-budget hipster wanna-be’s. All I wanted was to buy a variety of colored polos. Five minutes later I’m standing in line and the wifey comes walking up staring at my wadded-up pile of un-purchased shirts like I was holding a nude picture of Rosie O’Donnell.

“Seriously? Black, brown, and navy blue? Could you pick any more drab, darker colors?,” she asks as a half-dozen people around me look at my selections, then at me.

“I wear black…you know everything I wear is freakin’ black or dark. It matches that cloud over my head,” I said. Then reluctantly put the brown back and grabbed a dark red.

When I got home later I put the jeans on for the wifey and got a “oh….oh no. Oh I don’t like those at all. Wow. Well…I guess they’re OK, I’m just not used to seeing you wear something that’s in style I guess.”

I love her honesty…I just wish I could have heard it when I was standing half nude at the jeans rack in the middle of Kohls while receiving 2’s and 3’s out of a possible high score of 10 in the category “knowing when you shouldn’t be making these types of decisions on your own or without a female at your side.”