moving on, as shown through free t-shirts by Aiden H. '28

I have never read any of Marie Kondo’s books, nor have I claimed to, but I feel like we’re connected on at least some minor spiritual level. Although it’s definitely some form of undiagnosed anxiety or minor mental health disorder I’ve always hated physical stuff. Even when I was a kid, I wanted my room to be as clean as possible, with everything straightened and as little stuff to trip over as possible. When we moved apartments freshman year of high school, I didn’t put up any decorations on my walls because I didn’t want to spend the money or feel cluttered/off-balance. The only things in my room were a bed, bookshelf, and keyboard. I kept it that way for four years.

This led to a bad habit of me pushing all the little things I actually had to keep but never wanted to look at (sentimental knick knacks, random notebooks and folders, maybe even my social security card) into my closet, which stayed in a state of constant chaos. Every opening⁠01 Or pushing? Idk I had one of those weird pseudo-cultural appropriation hanging bead doors on my closet for most of elementary school. of the closet door instantly spiked my blood pressure levels. So in an effort of personal development, noticing how my college closet has been led to the same fate, I have decided on minor downsizing.

The issue is I don’t actually have that many clothes. I have maybe 4 pairs of pants and 6 shirts I can rotate for a max of like 8 outfits in any season. However, what I lack in day-clothes-I-would-actually-wear-outside I make up for with really-ugly-free-t-shirts-that-I-only-wear-to-bed-and-embarrassingly-to-the-bathroom-at-like-2-AM. In my most recent inventory, I have over 40 of these oddities, and they sit in a large, unkempt stack at the bottom of my closet that prevents me from putting anything else there.

Even though I cycle through these pretty regularly, when deciding what to keep and give away, I started thinking about the random scenarios I actually got these t-shirts. I decided to share some (but definitely not all) of the highlights, explain how I got them, and why/why not I’m keeping them.

Tie-Dye Regrets

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#1: At some point during deep COVID lockdown times, my friend and I rode our bikes to the closest Walmart and tie-dyed the largest shirts we could find. Although the result is minorly atrocious, it acts almost like a mumu and is objectively the best sleepwear.

Fun Fact: This shirt is so large that even a .5x wasn’t zoomed out enough for me to get it all on my camera. 

#2/3: These are two years of shirts from the same club: Sources of Strength. It was branded as the school’s mental health awareness club, but since Gen-Z mental health is an issue that no amount of an unfunded high school club can fix, we didn’t do a lot other than sit around and talk about our feelings at lunch. Once a year, though, we designed our t-shirt. Junior year, this was us all deciding on a mountain range (because Colorado? I guess?). Senior year, that had us each draw a little thing that made us happy in a circle and then scanned it onto a t-shirt (I think I drew a piece of cake). Then, we were supposed to come in on a Saturday to tie-dye it as a group. I see many problems with this:

1. Saturday tie-dye session? It was always at like 9:30 A:M, and one year I had to work and couldn’t make it anyway (hence the plain white one).
2. Tie-dye ruins the point of having a design on the shirt. I can’t read anything on the shirts through the neon colors that make me think of the Trolls movie.
3. Tie-dye makes shirts kinda scratchy, especially when they’re already low quality (which makes sense considering public high school budgeting).

Verdicts: Keep 1, get rid of 2 and 3.

National Honor Society

This was the shirt for my junior year of NHS. It was the first year I was on the board, so I was mandated to wear this shirt twice a month in front of a group of dead-in-the-eyes peers in the gym at lunches. And honestly? Don’t hate it. We were going for a retro wave-ish vibe for no reason other than we decided on it, and it turned out as one of the most okay-ish looking free t-shirts I’ve ever got. Still not wearing it confidently when I want a good outfit, but not actively ugly.

I also wore this shirt once where I ran a community service event for the club where we partnered with the local Parks Department to plant trees for Arbor Day. I shall keep this shirt in honor of Albert (the tree).

Verdict: Keep 🌲

Speech and Debate

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This is the three-year progression⁠02 I did go senior year, but I was too cheap to buy the shirt because it had corn on it for Iowa and I didn't want to remember the experience. of t-shirts I got at the national speech and debate tournament.

#1: This was the summer after freshman year, aka deep COVID. Because of this, instead of traveling to a location, my team went into my coach’s parent’s basement that we took over for a week with dozens of muffins and floor naps and hours of pinball on their pinball machine. I didn’t do great though and the shirt is the oldest and frumpiest.

#2: This was the first in-person year in Louisville, KY. We stayed in a Victorian-mansion-turned-Airbnb and got an arguably cuter color for the t-shirt. Over the course of the week, all I remember about competition is early-morning humidity and one guy telling me “not to hold my breath until my argument came true”, but KY itself was nice. We got yelled at for trying to go on the roof of the mansion and later went on an (awful, hot, long, but camp) ghost tour of Louisville houses. When I got this shirt I really liked it, but after years of wearing it, by lethally acidic face wash has bleached parts of it, and repeated washes have made the shirt very dry and scratchy.

#3: Similar to KY, Phoenix is nothing more memorable than “hot”. This was the year I did best, and we did have a pool at the VRBO we stayed in, so most of my memories are us destroying ping-pong and the pool. It was also the year that the Nuggets won the NBA finals, so we watched the final game and screamed. This shirt is also a little dry and over-worn (seems like the NSDA needs a higher shirt budget), but it has the cutest logo because it was the first year they decided on a mascot for the tournament (Prickles, cause Arizona yk). It also has the most recent memories attached to it.

Verdict: Keep 3, get rid of 1 and 2. It feels weird to get older and older and keep all of them. I don’t want to be like 25 with 3 of basically the same shirt from a high school extracurricular.

Music?

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#1: I dislike Guns N Roses to a fairly extreme extent. I don’t like dad rock, don’t think Axl Rose can still sing, and they don’t really have that many generationally-spanning hits that could put them in the same echelon of importance as other old bands like The Beatles, Pink Floyd, etc. etc. All this being said, my friend’s parents last year were going to their reunion tour in Denver and asked (begged?) if I would go with him so he didn’t have to sit alone at Guns N Roses. Turns out that this was the longest concert ever known, and I sat through the Eras Tour and its movie. After an hour-long opener, Guns N Roses came out while graphics of what I think were fetuses or some sort of deranged anthropomorphic minions crawled frantically in a mass on screens around the stadium. Guns N Roses then proceeded to play what I could only imagine is their entire discography for a nearly 4 hour set. After nearly 5 hours in Ball Arena, we agreed to not go to a Guns N Roses concert ever again. For Christmas he got me this Guns N Roses shirt. I retaliated with off-brand Pit Vipers⁠03 no hate we just statistically won't be friends if you own these unironically . Because it’s an actual tour shirt, though, it’s shockingly high quality.

#2: As the only Britney Spears in my household (unfortunately), my mom jokingly got this shirt when she saw it at a Target. It is a large and I’m not that self-evolved, so I have never worn this except as pajamas. Regardless, it’s Britney Spears and I do wear the shirt.

Verdict: Keep both for the joke and the comfort.

Oversized Grandpa Shirts

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I own 3-4 of these shirts that are hand-me-downs from my girlfriend’s grandpa. I dug through a hamper of like 30 and picked out the funniest three or four. I need these to be physically documented and yes I wear these XXXLs around Maseeh obsessively. Sorry? Sorry? What do you mean I don’t look good in this Margaritaville shirt that goes down to my knees that I got from a 70 year old I met once?

Verdict: Keep both, duh

The Greatest T-Shirts of All Time

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#1: I don’t even think I watched Sesame Street as a kid but the first time I saw this shirt I bursted out laughing harder than I ever have. I’m 99% sure it is available at most Walmarts, but the idea of me as the scrawniest nerd acting like a pimp because I watched PBS is hilarious, and the dad joke on the shirt will never get old.

Fun Fact: I have actually been gifted this shirt twice by two different people years apart. People just know me that well I guess.

#2: My libertarian (?) cousin passive aggressively/jokingly gave me this at my high school graduation, and despite how I kinda detest political paraphernalia⁠04 besides the whole that-bumper-sticker-isnt-doing-anything-productive-and-just-acts-as-a-way-to-anger-those-around-you-with-different-views rant, it's all ugly? like they have these huge PAC budgets and all the hats and shirts are just bolded letters. yall cant afford one graphic designer?? , I find the shirt just ironic enough that it’s kinda funny. I wear this shirt a lot in the summer because it’s the perfect amount of flowy without being baggy. I did get some stares from the geriatrics when I would go play pickleball though.

Verdict: Keep both.

That’s all. It doesn’t look like I gave up that many shirts, but I promise I am. It turns out that most shirts I’m willing to give away are just solid-toned t-shirts from Old Navy⁠05 trust I dont know, Old Navy is one of many retail mortal enemies I have I don’t remember ever buying. Let’s hope daylight savings today encourages even more spring cleaning (and fixes everything else that stems from the plague that is known as winter).

What’s the craziest t-shirt you own? I want pictures people.