My wardrobe has been a bone of contention in this house for some time. Not with me, with Tracey. She thinks I dress myself without any thought whatsoever, but she’s wrong. Except for my love of shorts with a camouflage pattern, I just don’t necessarily think about how I look. For me, it’s about comfort.
A t-shirt, long shorts and Samson sandles and I’m ready for anything from the tip to a plane trip. And it really is that simple because that’s any tee, any long shorts and my only pair of sandles. I just reach into my wardrobe and pull out whatever.
This does not sit well with my wife.
So Tracey’s new plan appears to be to replace my existing wardrobe with a pre-approved pick and match selection. My first hint of this was Christmas morning when I tore open a non-beer-carton shaped present to find several shirts and shorts.
“I spent about an hour at the shop picking these out for you,” my wife told me. She’d suddenly appeared at my side, all keen to explain how it was going to work from now on. “They all match. They’re all nice. They all have that thing your clothes have been missing up until now: a hint of fashion.”
What these clothes didn’t all have was enough material to wrap around this big bod of mine – she’d bought a size too small in everything.
“But I really like these clothes,” my wife whined. It seemed she’d really formed and emotional attachment. Then her face lit up as she had an idea. “Maybe you should just go on a diet.”
Instead, I snuck out of the house today with my number one son, Master22, and we hit the shop looking to replace them with something I could fit into. Tracey realized what was going on about twenty minutes after we hit the shops and I got a panicked phone call.
“What are you doing? Come home.”
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’ve been trying to replace them with exactly what you’ve picked out but they don’t have any of those items in my size.” Tracey was doubtful as to my ability to know this. “I asked one of the staff to help and she walked around trying to find them and there just aren’t any. But don’t worry, I’m picking out some nice stuff, similar to what you had.”
“Just don’t buy camouflage pants!” she said.
“Of course not,” I told her, then held my finger on our mobile’s microphone and whispered to my son to please put the shorts I was holding back on the rack. “Trust me.”
I was disappointed about the camouflage shorts for all of two minutes, at which point I found a patterned pair of shorts I liked just as much – khaki green with a delightful green leaf and pink flower pattern.
“I don’t know, Dad,” Master22 said when I showed him.
“At least they’re not camouflage,” I pointed out.
He wasn’t so sure. “I’m pretty sure they would be if you were single,” he said. He further expressed his doubts over my selections when we arrived at the counter and he informed the saleslady who processed our refund and subsequent sales, “I expect we’ll be back this afternoon.”
But we weren’t because Tracey loved them – is the sort of thing I’d love to be able to write. However the fact is I put the shorts on when she wasn’t looking so I could show her how great they look and now I can’t take them back because I dripped beer on them.
Which is fine by me because they go perfectly with my existing wardrobe. By which I mean they really are a comfy fit 🙂
I mean, how bad are they? Or rather, HOW GOOD!??! 😉
When not over here, Bruce Devereaux hangs out at his Big Family Little Income Facebook Page. Come join us 🙂
”Raising a family on little more than laughs.”
