the shirt

The shirt that started it all is black, has long sleeves (the left one has in a line running horizontally down the side the name of a band, NOFX) and features on the back a picture of a bratty looking boy holding a lollipop and choking a chicken. Beneath that it says Tour 94.

It's very large on me, not the size I might buy now, somewhat later than 1994. But at one time, a time I may have been more concerned with fashion than I am now, I found myself wearing clothes slightly larger than was necessary. I never wore my clothes ridiculously large, but there were a couple of years before I realized that I really just didn't like clothes that didn't fit.

The cuff on the right sleeve has almost always been about to come off. I try to be careful with it, and when it gets bad enough I can always sew it back on.

Almost as old as the shirt is my jacket. It's leather, from a store you may or may not have at your mall, a store that tries to convince you that everything is better made out of leather, but really what you want is that end of season jacket that's on sale so you can be like the other punks, or so I was thinking at the time. It was a gift from Momma, giving it that whole other something for me personally. The jacket itself is only of minor importance to this story other than that I always wear an extra layer under this jacket, one of which tends to be the NOFX shirt.

So I get to work and take the jacket off and then the layer, or maybe I was leaving work and putting the layer on and then the jacket. It really doesn't matter, but a younger coworker complimented me on it as she saw what it was.

For whatever reason this led me to ask various coworkers what they were doing in 1994, which we'll remember as being the birth year of this shirt. My answers were as varied as "in school" to "I was seven." Someone else was as old as nine in 1994. I was twenty two. I could almost have parented them, but even in the south that's asking just a bit much.

What was I doing in 1994? As far as the shirt goes it's its own little story. I was on my way from Charlotte, NC to Atlanta to see NOFX. We'd smoked some amount of something as we got started, and the something seemed to reignite some past LSD I'd consumed. I don't remember now why I drove, but the whole drive down was like a free trip. I quite enjoyed myself.

I would not recommend that anyone use drugs and drive. I was a younger person then and did things differently. I can't deny that I enjoyed the trip very much. I enjoyed seeing a great show, and to this day I enjoy when the winter months roll around and this shirt once more becomes part of my wardrobe.

I'm sure I've told lamer stories, but I honestly can't remember. It couldn't have been so long ago, but this is the lame story for tonight. I have an old shirt and behind that shirt is an amusing story of youthful ideas that one is immortal. It's enough to make a girl fish the tissue out of her sleeve.