My dad traveled a lot for work when I was a kid. Computer sales…maybe. I would not be surprised if on his deathbed he told us that he was a hitman for the CIA. Through his weekly trips, my dad got to visit some cool places. One benefit of traveling to different cities, countries, and... Continue Reading → The post Shirts from Dad appeared first on BlogGaud.
My dad traveled a lot for work when I was a kid. Computer sales…maybe. I would not be surprised if on his deathbed he told us that he was a hitman for the CIA.
Through his weekly trips, my dad got to visit some cool places. One benefit of traveling to different cities, countries, and events was that sometimes he would come home with swag for my brothers and I. Another benefit was that if he was gone during winter months, he wasn’t yelling at us about snow shoveling (why aren’t you shoveling, you’re shoveling wrong [yes, there’s a right and wrong way to shovel, and it’s all about where you start, whether you are clearing horizontally or vertically {heaven forbid diagonally}, and how you should shovel differently as a group], why is your mother shoveling, etc.).
Three Shirt Scenarios
Little Kid Scenario
When you’re a kid, anything new is cool. If Dad came home with a new shirt for me when I was in elementary school, you better believe I was wearing that sucker the next day. And since kids are way nicer than tweens, teens, and adults, no one cared about what you wore to school. In fact, wearing a new shirt from dad gave me the opportunity to talk not only about the shirt, but my dad and his travels.
Wrong Size and a Hard Pass
Stephen Covey’s Habit 4 is “Think Win-Win.” To understand wrong size and a hard pass, “Think Lose-Lose.” This situation is only relevant to ages greater than or equal to a tween.
I’m not a big guy, and I certainly wasn’t a big kid, so when dad came home with any variation of large, I was in trouble. He traveled a lot, but was home most weekends, so he must have looked at me occasionally, so I don’t understand how he arrived at his size decisions. “He’ll grow into it.” I’m guessing this was the mantra circulating in dad’s head when buying us clothes. But, it’s not like my size is an anomaly. Mom and Dad are both short and came from relatively short statured families. So, it’s not like my scrawny size was a disappointment to the gargantuan Gaudet legacy.
And not only is it the wrong size, the shirt is hideous. Since we’re out of elementary school, kids DO care about what you wear to school. Daffy Duck with a backwards San Diego Chargers hat on a t-shirt isn’t going to cut it in the 7th grade. A denim button down (don’t care that it was bought in the Bahamas) will ensure my high school girlfriendless streak will remain Ripkenesque.
Bottom of the drawer? Art smock? Pass it on to Ryan (younger brother)?
A lose lose sounds pretty terrible, but maybe it’s a case of two negatives equaling a positive. If the shirt was the correct size, then I would feel obligated to wear it. With it being way too big, I could say, “Darn, I guess I’ll have to wait to grow into it.”
If Only
This is the worst case scenario.
Earlier, I used an example of Dad bringing home a denim button down. Truthfully, Dad was mostly bringing home sports related t-shirts. Sports related shirts, for the most part (sans Looney Tunes), were a pretty safe bet to wear in middle and high school.
Dad would bring all three of us into the living room. We would sit down on the couch. He would ask if anyone remembered where he just flew back from. Mikey, my older brother, was usually the one to remember. Dad would then go one by one sharing a story about each shirt and then connecting it to each one of us. They were pretty loose connections. “Davey, you’re darker than your brothers, so I got you the Brazil World Cup shirt.” “Ryan, you speak English, so I got you the England World Cup shirt.” “Mikey, you like hot dogs, which is pretty much a bratwurst, so I got you the Germany World Cup shirt.”
Fantastic! I got a Brazil shirt (I would have been cool with England or Germany [I speak English and enjoy hot dogs]). But then came the unfolding. Unfold once, unfold again, unfold a third time (crap), and unfold one final time to reveal an XXL. Maybe we should have all gotten Germany shirts, because it would have taken a Joey Chestnut helping of hot dogs for any of us to fit into them.
Now I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Don’t wear the shirt, and feel guilty because I’m hurting my dad’s feelings. Wear the shirt, feel stupid and hurt myself via the physical beatings that would ensue at school.
Flash Forward to Today
Dad doesn’t travel as much now that he’s retired. But, he’ll still get me the occasional t-shirt. Of course it’s too big. And that’s okay, because someday I’ll grow into it.
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