I Shall Overcome [the Dumpster with the pack of gum]
Between the middle of high school and my senior year of college was a period of time my during which friends and family will gladly agree was my "Homeless Stage." Without having to lay out the definition for the term, highlights include:
Homeless 2000, a backyard festival at Alice's house during which we were required to not wear shoes. Party activities included lighting things on fire, a neighborhood-wide scavenger hunt for garbage (we found a dilapidated volleyball net and a can of propane!), and races.
There was that short - very short, albeit for the sake of irony - amount of during during which friends bought me the generic gray Velcro sneakers from WalMart. I sported those shoes with pride before facing the realization that these sneakers were almost exclusively for the developmentally challenged, thus blackening the humor in the joke and leaving me laden with guilt. Give me your Mexican midgets and obese children, but spare me the retarded, as they live on a land of vulnerability onto which I dare not tread.
Before graduating high school, Alice and Jeff "surprised" me on my birthday with an ugly suitcase that was laid out to rest by a family several blocks westward, as well as a piece of wood. Not quite sure where to find the charm in these gifts, I immediately allowed my compulsive mom to send these items off to the same death as originally planned. There lies a fine line between being cheap and being ironic.
Sophomore year at NYU threw my fashion sense far, far off the scale of what fell between looking homeless and mental. Unfortuntely, I spent most of 2002 drowning in the latter, the year of my first (and last) foray into the world of D.I.Y. clothes-making:
Something I'm not so crazy about? Dressing like a clown. Like an actual clown.
As of today, I'm anything but a Brooks Brothers, Seville Row type of fella. On the other hand, I've "cleaned up my act" a little bit.
Nearly gone are the days when I proudly pegged myself an "obese hobo manbaby dinosaur." But do I still wear sweatpants that I found lying in a gym locker for a week before I swiped 'em, washed 'em, and realized they were The Most Comfortable Garment In The World? Hell yes I do. Does gripping the neck of a bottle cheap pink champage sound that much better than sipping a stingy, sour ale to have a good time? You know it. Is the tee shirt in which I sleep night after night a tattered, barely-there bellyshirt customized by yours truly after receiving it as a freebie several years ago? Damn right, it is - and I ain't about to throw it away! (Although I'd never let my friends see me in it, either.)
There are reasons why I'll never let myself say goodbye to the silly little hobo that lives inside my soul. Things that are handed-down or torn to perfection and nestled into a safe nest of comfort, no matter how naturally repellent they may be to others, are truly priceless, no? They say that when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade.
Let me rephrase it for you:
When you find a 70's-era canvas on the street, propped up against a couch about to be destroyed (or adopted by immigrants, no doubt), you don't just drive by.
You pick it up, hang it on a wall, and let that creepy elderly gaze of pity wash over you like the awful banana-colored background does the WASPy subject's canary yellow hunting blouse.
