School teaches you to separate; invisible hands like grocery baggers drop you into like-means-like, colds or non-perishables. Colors, sure, but clothing, too. An internal compass, SXSE leads poor to poor. Due North go the kids in Garanimals and Hush Puppies. Children don’t need guiding hands. They know where to stand apart from the others intuitively.
A very small group headed SXSE always walked a little more slowly, children whose poor, single mothers read library books to them each night before bed. They always looked back North, believing they were meant to wear those bright burnt oranges and leather as golden brown and comfortable as their fried Southern namesakes.
* * *
This morning I dressed quietly in the dark, trying not to wake the kids. I reached into the wardrobe and took the first thing I felt, a new shirt, one bought over the weekend in haste and carelessness, drawn to its horizontal lines, bored waiting for the clerk to find the earrings I had pointed out in an advertisement.
I’m wearing this shirt today, unused to its comfort, its long, soft sleeves, its bright, burnt orange that matches the golden brown of my shoes, this...er
I run to the bathroom in horror.
My wife, noticing my obvious despair, comes to me, puts her hands gently around my shoulders. ‘What is it? Why do you look in such pain?’
‘Look!’ I pointed to the mirror.
‘What?’
‘I look like a goddamn Garanimal!’
‘What?’
‘All I’m saying is that it should be illegal to sell children’s clothing to obviously drunk adults who clearly have unresolved issues. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ALL MY IZODS ARE IN THE WASH AT THE SAME TIME!’
‘They’re not in the wash. They’re in the drawer. Next to your HOBIEs.’