As If 2020 Hasn't Been Challenging Enough!

 

As if 2020 hasn't challenged our collective resolve enough this had to happen!!

I've got - I had - three of these shirts. Denim, washed and worn over the course of nearly two decades to the buttery softness of a hug from a teddy bear.

I use them as over-shirts on top of my standard sleeveless shirt. (I don't like wearing things I have to pull on over my head so as an alternative I cut the sleeves out of my old, light-weight office-shirts to wear instead because - well even I don't want to see my old-man belly all day!)

One serves for general daytime use, one for evening wear, while the third rests in the closet until it's rotated into the roster on the next laundry day, which, since I have ten pairs of socks, is every 10 days whether it's needed or not.

And yes, that includes even the hottest parts of the summer. Not that I wear one of these shirts when out and about in the barn or on the property during our warm to hot to melt-down weather, but - well, let's just say The Wife's thermostat is calibrated differently than mine - so when I go inside around mid-day for our one meal of the day that highly refrigerated air boarders on being painful, so the over-shirt goes on.

The same holds true summers and winters for the shirt on evening-wear duty.  After the sun sets and I've showered, it goes on just before we settle down with popcorn to wind down and watch something prerecorded off the satellite dish. Again, because, while The Wife keeps lowering the thermostat in the summer, that refrigerated air is just too much for me, and during the winter we rarely turn the heat on.

All in all, a nice, comfortable, settled routine in the midst of all this chaos.

Then on one recent - fateful - wash day this shirt went in intact and came out like this!

OK, OK, maybe there already was a snag in the sleeve, perhaps it could even have been called a small tear, but it is a work-shirt after all,

and perhaps the fabric was getting a little thin.

But did I really deserve this!?

No No! I know that might sound whiny, but you don't understand just how traumatic this is!

I have't bought clothes, other than underwear and socks, in 15 years, but just a few months ago I cut the sleeves off the last of my office-shirts, my two remaining over-shirts are just as old and worn as this one, and the resale shops around here are all closed by Covid.

What am I going to dooo?!!

OK (hack) OK (sniff) I've recovered from my meltdown; at least for now.

Rest in peace old friend.