Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Armed with the knowledge of my sister's upcoming yard sale, for which I'm donating a couple bags of clothes, I managed to convey my excitement to my mom this weekend.

The upshot: we went through her closet and removed five bags of clothes for the yard sale.

That was a big achievement, because Mom keeps everything. I mean, seriously, she has clothes that are older than me.

We put on the air conditioner, took some glasses of water with us, and went to town. Some of the culled clothing was fairly generic: solid-colored T-shirts and sweaters. But in some back corners of her closet Mom had some serious 80s stuff, with bright vertical stripes in turquoise or pink. Unfortunately, they weren't quite cool enough for me to keep. And this includes a pink sweatshirt with triangles made of some sort of strange, puffy material on the sleeve.

Of course, some of the clothing was not in good condition, so my sister's going to put it in a box marked "Free." Some people will take a free shirt even if it has a stain on it, because they figure they can dye it or use it for a paint shirt. And it's better than sticking it back in the bottom of Mom's dresser drawer, hoping it will heal itself.

I also went through my old bedroom and cleared out the last dresser I had to go through. I currently possess the other dresser that used to be in my bedroom. I should probably take the one that's left, because I definitely need more room for storing clothes. The problem would be convincing somebody down on this end to help me move it in. I'll have to think that through.

Anyway, I was hoping to find more items for the sale, but all I found were items with sentimental value, things I'd never discard. I filled a trash bag with them to bring them home.

In the cache were a pea green sweater and black miniskirt I loved but put them away when they no longer fit. The sweater fits now; the miniskirt will fit later this year.

I found T-shirts from the high school musicals I participated in: "Oklahoma" and "Bye Bye Birdie." I never wore them much because I'd foolishly had the name of my character emblazoned on the back. But in both cases, I was really in the chorus line with one or two lines. I just happened to have a name. So my "Bye Bye Birdie" shirt says "Helen" on the back. And my "Oklahoma" shirt says "Nancy" or something. I felt awkward wearing them because people would either think that was my name or wonder why I had some other girl's name on the back of my shirt.

There was the T-shirt I made for my brother in college that said, "My parents went to the Spanish Inquisition and all I got was this lousy T-shirt." It was dripping with blood, courtesy of red fabric paint. There were also some tie-dyes he and I made, some WPSU T-shirts, Monty Python Society T-shirts, Amnesty International, stuff like that.

My actual master's hood and my gown were in there, which I suppose I should have in case I ever need academic dress. I told my brother that I could wear them if I ever gave a speech at a university and got an honorary doctorate.

"But then they'd give you a new hood to wear," he said.

"Darn it!" He was right. Well, maybe I'll find another occasion to wear it some day. At any rate, I'm still paying off the student loans, so I'm darn sure going to keep it.

Also in the drawer was my David Bowie "Sound and Vision" tour T-shirt, which I'd stopped wearing after I noticed the decal was starting to come off. It's slightly discolored. White does not age kindly.

At the bottom of the drawer was a sweatshirt that was presented to me at the close of my senior year of high school. It said "88" with the names of all my classmates inside. Of course, I very rarely wore it. There's no surer way to look like a freshman in college than to wear a sweatshirt announcing your high school graduation date.

It was the same way with the Milton High School Band sweatshirts, which had survived the test of time with a few stains. My brother and I agreed that if we'd received those sweatshirts at the beginning of our senior year of high school, we would have worn them regularly. But receiving them at the end of high school, they were destined for the drawer.

I also cleared out the drawer which contained jewelry and baubles I'd accumulated over the years. This includes some very Eighties sunglasses, unfortunately broken, which look like venetian shades, and a stretchy belt that says "Alice" -- wrong spelling! And, of course, there was my "Danger: Radioactive" T-shirt which I thought was such a funny pun while working at the campus radio station.

I was thrilled to discover that the black velvet dress I'd held onto from a Halloween vampire costume about nine years ago fits me again, almost perfectly. I've gone up and down so much in the past 10 years that it's nice to put things into perspective. Maybe I'll pull it out some weekend, put in my false fangs, for old times.

As I packed my bag of goodies into my truck, I thought about the irony of the situation. I'd just spent a week culling two bags of clothes from my closet and drawers, only to return with another bag full.

But I had to smile: these clothes, with all of their happy history, are a much better use of my space.

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

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