(no subject)
With history comes great stories, and with great stories comes great characters. One of these great characters may not be so rigid and boring as some history characters may be, but rather something simple and malleable. One of these great characters may not have been alive or dead, but rather is inanimately living. But if it's inanimate how can it be living or have a story, you may ask. The answer to that question is terribly simple, though it is often overlooked in the hustle and bustle of morning wake-ups. Clothes. We all have them, they all have a story. Somewhere in each of our closets is some piece of clothing that isn't like the others and has a certain aura about it. It could have been given to you by a grandmother, bought at a garage sale or lost in a mound of clothes only to be found again, but each of us has some article of clothing like this. One with a story. One with a secret history. This is where my tie-dye shirt comes in. It's story goes a little something like this:
Wake up. Open eyes. Bright lights. What the hell is this? Wait, who are these people? What are these things around me? What is this thing I'm in? What the hell is this, shrink wrap? Okay, don't panic, there has to be some sort of explanation for this. Explanation for being trapped? What is this! Am I a damned cocktail party finger sandwich here? Hey, what are you looking at buddy, yeah you, what are you looking at? You're stuck in one of these things just like I am. Breathe. Inhale. Serenity now! Okay, okay, we're calm now. Oh jeez, who is this clown? Why is he looking at me like that? He looks almost like he's got something sinister on his mind and that strange jail on wheels doesn't deter that theory either. I don't know what he wants but I sure hope he goes away soon. Stick it. Don't look at me like that. I'll have none of your traveling slavery mobile! No, that isn't an invitation to pick me up! Hey, put me down! Obviously you can't hear me, but perhaps I can infiltrate your decision making center and mess up any impulses that are saying take me with you. Maybe if I concentrate really hard and scrunch all of my hundred thread count together it'll convince him I'm not a good idea. He looks confused, so maybe it's working. He's looking around, so now I know he's up to no good. What's that he's doing with his mouth? What's he saying? Oh jeez, whatever it was is bringing another of his kind over. It's a woman. She looks so nice. I almost feel relieved. She has a certain calming nature about her; perhaps it's the warm smell or flowers on her sweater. I sure do like that sweater; I wonder what it's made of. Polyester? Wool? Cotton? Yeah, definitely cotton. She sure does look nice, almost too nice. It looks like someone forgot to iron them both out, but everyone has their quirks so I can't really complain. I mean, just yesterday I was a ball of string, so her being wrinkly isn't something I should say anything about. Maybe buddy's not so bad after all, what with a gal like her and all. Maybe. I still have my doubts, but I suppose the weirdness of being picked up and pawed at by complete strangers in a terribly light place surrounded by poorly made things in shrink wrap packages as well can only be looked past so much. Oh, hey we're moving. Buddy's handing me to the lady. As long as she doesn't sit me down in the wheeled prison I'll be fine; I sure don't want to be in there. That's twice as scary as 'Jim' that oversaw my assembly yesterday. Now 'Jim' was a piece of work, what with his hairy ears and all. She's holding on to me, this is nice. She sure does have soft hands; such soft hands. I wonder where we're going, though I really don't care as long as I'm not stuck in that bin with all those other shrink wrapped losers. We sure are moving a lot, though not very fast. Ah well, it's all about pacing yourself. Slow and steady won the what? Race. Ah yes, good show. We're getting closer to a bunch more people like my two, but these ones are all different. The guy to the far left has a patch on his eye and clothes that look like dead leaves; the lady beside him has her hair pulled up in such a tight bunch I think her brain may just have half the notion to burst through her head; the boy beside us has what looks like a fist in his nose. Jeez, and I thought the shrink wrapped losers were weird. It looks like we're leaving. I'm sure glad of that.
The lady's handing me to some disgruntled lady. She smells like rotten cheese, oh jeez. Oh man I hope she puts me down. Wait, what the hell are they doing? I don't want to go in there. What is that guacamole? Broccoli? I can't even tell. It could be another piece of fabric, but after seeing Dead leaf guy I can't really tell the difference. I suppose it doesn't really matter all that much though. But I really don't want to be in here.
I don't know how long I was in that sack with those things, but however long it was, it was too long. The next thing I remember was having the soft handed lady putting me into some sort of box with a few pairs of socks. Boy was it ever dark in there. I don't know why she would do something like that, I mean, it seemed like she really liked me. I know I really liked her. She would always smile at me and mumble something to Buddy. I really don't know why she would put me in that thing like she did.
The next thing I saw was some ice-cream faced, snotty nose, drooling heathen. I wanted to get the hell out of there. He sure was creepy. But he did get me out of that shrink wrap in a hurry, so I suppose I have to like him a little bit. Hey! There's Buddy and the soft handed lady! Hey! Get me out of the hands of this grubby jerk! I don't want to be here! Why are you smiling! No, don't hug him or wish him happy anything. I don't want to be here. Please take me with you. Please. Please...
This jerk - I think his name was Tommy, or something, I didn't care - didn't take good care of me at all since every other day his tall lady would have to put this terrible smelling stuff on me to take out whatever new stain he put into me. It was terrible. Before I knew it I was being set onto a table with a bunch of crap and a lady with pretty, day-glo flowers on her skirt was buying me. I sure was glad I didn't stay with that boy long.
I sure did like this new lady. She was so sweet. She talked about all kinds of things with her friends; things like freedom, love, and abolishing this that and the other thing. I think 'corporate America' was a big one, but like 'birthday' I still don't think I'll ever know what it is. Her friends were some interesting people, let me tell you. This one 'Jake' was my favorite. Jake had really long hair, almost as long as the lady's but it was all twisted up into crazy knots. Jake was the same color as the socks the soft hand lady gave to that monster Tommy - real dark like. I liked him anyways. I didn't really care if he was a different color, and neither did the day-glo lady, he was a nice guy either way. He was always listening to this whimsically captivating music that was like nothing I'd ever heard before. If I had a mind, that music certainly would have blown it. It was almost like the music played to all the crazy colors and swirls in his shirt. It looked like a rainbow had puked on most of his clothes, but in a good way. In the best possible way. Everyone likes rainbows. I think Jake was quite easily the rainbows best friend. They were everywhere. Then one night after a whole lot of music the day-glo lady - Jake called her Darling - and Jake decided that I needed to join the rainbow crowd. They twisted me up all crazy and plunked me down into buckets after bucket of this crazy colored water. After twenty five minutes and a few rinses, I too, was part of the rainbow retching group. I actually really liked the idea of being more bright and cheerful - it reflected the attitude Jake and Darling had taught me. I felt amazing. I could tell that Darling felt wonderful too. She wore me even more than she did before. She even wore me with her pretty, day-glo flower skirt I first met her in. She, Jake and I were together all the time. They even took me to some festival where all the wonderful music was playing; I think it was named Windsock or something. The name didn’t matter; it wasn’t important anyways. Like Jake said ‘It’s all about the music, man’ and he was absolutely right.
We had a lot of good years together, the three of us. Darling’s stomach grew like watermelons a handful of times, so she didn’t really get to wear me much, but that was alright. I liked seeing how excited Jake was that Darling was harvesting fruit inside her, it was sweet. The sentiment, not the fruit. The fruit turned out not to be fruit at all, actually. They looked like ice-cream faces, but were a lot nicer, and didn’t, in fact, have ice cream smeared on their faces. After a while Jake and Darling looked like they needed ironing, but I liked the way they were starting to look. While Darling and Jake were getting wrinkly the fruit babies were growing larger and larger each day and both of them ended up wearing me - since Darling couldn’t anymore. But it seemed the bigger the fruit babies got, the more ironing Jake and Darling needed. That was strange. I never could figure that out. But the more everyone changed, the less I got worn, to the point of no one wearing me anymore. The fruit babies eventually had fruit babies of their own and left the house. It was just the three of us again - Jake, Darling and I. Just like old times. They were still as warm, fun and interesting as ever. They hadn’t changed a bit. Well, a little bit. Jake didn’t smoke his grass anymore. He would always complain about mowing the grass and say that the damned lawn mower wouldn’t ever start and it was too hot. I think he saw the grass as a negative, but then he would smoke it after. So maybe it wasn’t a negative thing, after all. Maybe he did one for the other. I don’t know. Jake was crazy like that. But somewhere in between the music and the babies Jake had developed a nasty cough. It was a cough that would wake Darling and me up in the middle of the night sometimes. She would lean over, hand him some puffer thing, and tell him to breathe deep; that it was going to be alright. The emphysema was acting up again, she would say. It got so we could barely go through the night without Jake taking a few of these fits. I wish I could have done something, but Darling seemed like she had it under control. Darling always had things under control. In the mornings Jake would curse about the fits of the night before, blaming all that smoking and grass on it. He got so mad one day that he fell to the floor and had to be taken away by a bunch of people with uniforms and blinking lights all over the place. I never saw Jake after that. I suppose he just got too angry ay at that grass and decided he wasn’t going to come back. Maybe it was negative after all. I still never did see that lawn mower start right, so maybe Jake was right all along.
After Jake left Darling took all the rainbow things -myself included- and put us in a box. I felt more at home being in this box than I was that first time, but I was with friends so it wasn’t too bad. It was different, but not bad. One thing that I was glad stayed was the music. Oh that music. Even though I was in that box I could still hear Darling singing Jake’s old music. It made me happy that Jake didn’t take that with him when he went away. It really made Darling happy too.
But then, all of a sudden, I didn’t hear Darling singing one day, or the next, or the day after that. It was strange not to hear her voice. It went on like that for quite a while, until one day I felt us moving. We were going somewhere. Then I heard Darling’s voice again. Phew. She didn’t get angry at the lawn mower too. But we were in a strange place, talking to a strange woman. She was wrinklier and pale than Darling and had a tube going into her nose, but she was polite. “These boxes have brought me a lot of joy over the years, but I think it’s time for me to pass them on to someone else. They’ve seen a lot of things, and their time isn’t here yet. They still have many things to experience.” And with that Darling gave the boxes to the tube lady. The tube lady smiled and even though I could see that Darling didn’t want to leave, she did. She left with tears in her eyes.
The tube lady sorted everything that was in the boxes and put them into different bins. There were all sorts of things in this new place. They had shelves of books, pictures stacked on the ground, bed sheets hung on racks and signs that said ‘Women’s Church United Thrift Shop’ on the walls. It sure was neat. I saw a whole lot of different people come through that store- some leaving with the free bread, others not. The tube lady stuck me with a piece of paper that said ’35 cents’ on it. That sure did hurt when she stuck me with that pin, but I didn’t complain any since she had tubes up her nose and probably knew a lot about hurting as it was. I tried to make friends with some of the other clothes in the bin I was put into, but no one seemed to be very friendly or know anything about Windsock. They weren’t much company at all. But then, one day, this jovial, loving wrinkly lady came in with a really young girl that looked something like Darling used to - except with crazy purple glasses. I know Darling sure would have liked those glasses. They looked like really neat people, I could tell. The wrinkly lady laughed and smiled a lot, and was just caring and loving all the way around. I really liked her. She had a soft heart. I was sort of disappointed that they didn’t walk up to my bin when they came in and I was afraid that I almost wouldn’t get to talk to them at all, but then right before the old lady was about to leave the younger girl came over to the bin and immediately picked me up. Maybe, after all these years, my mind controlling techniques have improved because before I knew it the three of us were getting into a small, black, truck and were setting off on a whole new, big set of adventures. I sure wish Jake could have seen us that day.
Wake up. Open eyes. Bright lights. What the hell is this? Wait, who are these people? What are these things around me? What is this thing I'm in? What the hell is this, shrink wrap? Okay, don't panic, there has to be some sort of explanation for this. Explanation for being trapped? What is this! Am I a damned cocktail party finger sandwich here? Hey, what are you looking at buddy, yeah you, what are you looking at? You're stuck in one of these things just like I am. Breathe. Inhale. Serenity now! Okay, okay, we're calm now. Oh jeez, who is this clown? Why is he looking at me like that? He looks almost like he's got something sinister on his mind and that strange jail on wheels doesn't deter that theory either. I don't know what he wants but I sure hope he goes away soon. Stick it. Don't look at me like that. I'll have none of your traveling slavery mobile! No, that isn't an invitation to pick me up! Hey, put me down! Obviously you can't hear me, but perhaps I can infiltrate your decision making center and mess up any impulses that are saying take me with you. Maybe if I concentrate really hard and scrunch all of my hundred thread count together it'll convince him I'm not a good idea. He looks confused, so maybe it's working. He's looking around, so now I know he's up to no good. What's that he's doing with his mouth? What's he saying? Oh jeez, whatever it was is bringing another of his kind over. It's a woman. She looks so nice. I almost feel relieved. She has a certain calming nature about her; perhaps it's the warm smell or flowers on her sweater. I sure do like that sweater; I wonder what it's made of. Polyester? Wool? Cotton? Yeah, definitely cotton. She sure does look nice, almost too nice. It looks like someone forgot to iron them both out, but everyone has their quirks so I can't really complain. I mean, just yesterday I was a ball of string, so her being wrinkly isn't something I should say anything about. Maybe buddy's not so bad after all, what with a gal like her and all. Maybe. I still have my doubts, but I suppose the weirdness of being picked up and pawed at by complete strangers in a terribly light place surrounded by poorly made things in shrink wrap packages as well can only be looked past so much. Oh, hey we're moving. Buddy's handing me to the lady. As long as she doesn't sit me down in the wheeled prison I'll be fine; I sure don't want to be in there. That's twice as scary as 'Jim' that oversaw my assembly yesterday. Now 'Jim' was a piece of work, what with his hairy ears and all. She's holding on to me, this is nice. She sure does have soft hands; such soft hands. I wonder where we're going, though I really don't care as long as I'm not stuck in that bin with all those other shrink wrapped losers. We sure are moving a lot, though not very fast. Ah well, it's all about pacing yourself. Slow and steady won the what? Race. Ah yes, good show. We're getting closer to a bunch more people like my two, but these ones are all different. The guy to the far left has a patch on his eye and clothes that look like dead leaves; the lady beside him has her hair pulled up in such a tight bunch I think her brain may just have half the notion to burst through her head; the boy beside us has what looks like a fist in his nose. Jeez, and I thought the shrink wrapped losers were weird. It looks like we're leaving. I'm sure glad of that.
The lady's handing me to some disgruntled lady. She smells like rotten cheese, oh jeez. Oh man I hope she puts me down. Wait, what the hell are they doing? I don't want to go in there. What is that guacamole? Broccoli? I can't even tell. It could be another piece of fabric, but after seeing Dead leaf guy I can't really tell the difference. I suppose it doesn't really matter all that much though. But I really don't want to be in here.
I don't know how long I was in that sack with those things, but however long it was, it was too long. The next thing I remember was having the soft handed lady putting me into some sort of box with a few pairs of socks. Boy was it ever dark in there. I don't know why she would do something like that, I mean, it seemed like she really liked me. I know I really liked her. She would always smile at me and mumble something to Buddy. I really don't know why she would put me in that thing like she did.
The next thing I saw was some ice-cream faced, snotty nose, drooling heathen. I wanted to get the hell out of there. He sure was creepy. But he did get me out of that shrink wrap in a hurry, so I suppose I have to like him a little bit. Hey! There's Buddy and the soft handed lady! Hey! Get me out of the hands of this grubby jerk! I don't want to be here! Why are you smiling! No, don't hug him or wish him happy anything. I don't want to be here. Please take me with you. Please. Please...
This jerk - I think his name was Tommy, or something, I didn't care - didn't take good care of me at all since every other day his tall lady would have to put this terrible smelling stuff on me to take out whatever new stain he put into me. It was terrible. Before I knew it I was being set onto a table with a bunch of crap and a lady with pretty, day-glo flowers on her skirt was buying me. I sure was glad I didn't stay with that boy long.
I sure did like this new lady. She was so sweet. She talked about all kinds of things with her friends; things like freedom, love, and abolishing this that and the other thing. I think 'corporate America' was a big one, but like 'birthday' I still don't think I'll ever know what it is. Her friends were some interesting people, let me tell you. This one 'Jake' was my favorite. Jake had really long hair, almost as long as the lady's but it was all twisted up into crazy knots. Jake was the same color as the socks the soft hand lady gave to that monster Tommy - real dark like. I liked him anyways. I didn't really care if he was a different color, and neither did the day-glo lady, he was a nice guy either way. He was always listening to this whimsically captivating music that was like nothing I'd ever heard before. If I had a mind, that music certainly would have blown it. It was almost like the music played to all the crazy colors and swirls in his shirt. It looked like a rainbow had puked on most of his clothes, but in a good way. In the best possible way. Everyone likes rainbows. I think Jake was quite easily the rainbows best friend. They were everywhere. Then one night after a whole lot of music the day-glo lady - Jake called her Darling - and Jake decided that I needed to join the rainbow crowd. They twisted me up all crazy and plunked me down into buckets after bucket of this crazy colored water. After twenty five minutes and a few rinses, I too, was part of the rainbow retching group. I actually really liked the idea of being more bright and cheerful - it reflected the attitude Jake and Darling had taught me. I felt amazing. I could tell that Darling felt wonderful too. She wore me even more than she did before. She even wore me with her pretty, day-glo flower skirt I first met her in. She, Jake and I were together all the time. They even took me to some festival where all the wonderful music was playing; I think it was named Windsock or something. The name didn’t matter; it wasn’t important anyways. Like Jake said ‘It’s all about the music, man’ and he was absolutely right.
We had a lot of good years together, the three of us. Darling’s stomach grew like watermelons a handful of times, so she didn’t really get to wear me much, but that was alright. I liked seeing how excited Jake was that Darling was harvesting fruit inside her, it was sweet. The sentiment, not the fruit. The fruit turned out not to be fruit at all, actually. They looked like ice-cream faces, but were a lot nicer, and didn’t, in fact, have ice cream smeared on their faces. After a while Jake and Darling looked like they needed ironing, but I liked the way they were starting to look. While Darling and Jake were getting wrinkly the fruit babies were growing larger and larger each day and both of them ended up wearing me - since Darling couldn’t anymore. But it seemed the bigger the fruit babies got, the more ironing Jake and Darling needed. That was strange. I never could figure that out. But the more everyone changed, the less I got worn, to the point of no one wearing me anymore. The fruit babies eventually had fruit babies of their own and left the house. It was just the three of us again - Jake, Darling and I. Just like old times. They were still as warm, fun and interesting as ever. They hadn’t changed a bit. Well, a little bit. Jake didn’t smoke his grass anymore. He would always complain about mowing the grass and say that the damned lawn mower wouldn’t ever start and it was too hot. I think he saw the grass as a negative, but then he would smoke it after. So maybe it wasn’t a negative thing, after all. Maybe he did one for the other. I don’t know. Jake was crazy like that. But somewhere in between the music and the babies Jake had developed a nasty cough. It was a cough that would wake Darling and me up in the middle of the night sometimes. She would lean over, hand him some puffer thing, and tell him to breathe deep; that it was going to be alright. The emphysema was acting up again, she would say. It got so we could barely go through the night without Jake taking a few of these fits. I wish I could have done something, but Darling seemed like she had it under control. Darling always had things under control. In the mornings Jake would curse about the fits of the night before, blaming all that smoking and grass on it. He got so mad one day that he fell to the floor and had to be taken away by a bunch of people with uniforms and blinking lights all over the place. I never saw Jake after that. I suppose he just got too angry ay at that grass and decided he wasn’t going to come back. Maybe it was negative after all. I still never did see that lawn mower start right, so maybe Jake was right all along.
After Jake left Darling took all the rainbow things -myself included- and put us in a box. I felt more at home being in this box than I was that first time, but I was with friends so it wasn’t too bad. It was different, but not bad. One thing that I was glad stayed was the music. Oh that music. Even though I was in that box I could still hear Darling singing Jake’s old music. It made me happy that Jake didn’t take that with him when he went away. It really made Darling happy too.
But then, all of a sudden, I didn’t hear Darling singing one day, or the next, or the day after that. It was strange not to hear her voice. It went on like that for quite a while, until one day I felt us moving. We were going somewhere. Then I heard Darling’s voice again. Phew. She didn’t get angry at the lawn mower too. But we were in a strange place, talking to a strange woman. She was wrinklier and pale than Darling and had a tube going into her nose, but she was polite. “These boxes have brought me a lot of joy over the years, but I think it’s time for me to pass them on to someone else. They’ve seen a lot of things, and their time isn’t here yet. They still have many things to experience.” And with that Darling gave the boxes to the tube lady. The tube lady smiled and even though I could see that Darling didn’t want to leave, she did. She left with tears in her eyes.
The tube lady sorted everything that was in the boxes and put them into different bins. There were all sorts of things in this new place. They had shelves of books, pictures stacked on the ground, bed sheets hung on racks and signs that said ‘Women’s Church United Thrift Shop’ on the walls. It sure was neat. I saw a whole lot of different people come through that store- some leaving with the free bread, others not. The tube lady stuck me with a piece of paper that said ’35 cents’ on it. That sure did hurt when she stuck me with that pin, but I didn’t complain any since she had tubes up her nose and probably knew a lot about hurting as it was. I tried to make friends with some of the other clothes in the bin I was put into, but no one seemed to be very friendly or know anything about Windsock. They weren’t much company at all. But then, one day, this jovial, loving wrinkly lady came in with a really young girl that looked something like Darling used to - except with crazy purple glasses. I know Darling sure would have liked those glasses. They looked like really neat people, I could tell. The wrinkly lady laughed and smiled a lot, and was just caring and loving all the way around. I really liked her. She had a soft heart. I was sort of disappointed that they didn’t walk up to my bin when they came in and I was afraid that I almost wouldn’t get to talk to them at all, but then right before the old lady was about to leave the younger girl came over to the bin and immediately picked me up. Maybe, after all these years, my mind controlling techniques have improved because before I knew it the three of us were getting into a small, black, truck and were setting off on a whole new, big set of adventures. I sure wish Jake could have seen us that day.