When T stands for time

I've never really considered myself a pack rat; but I'm the first to acknowledge my addiction to sentiment.

How else to explain the photo albums I've kept since sixth grade - an encyclopedic timeline, photos chronologically placed in the order in which they were taken, subjects' names written below each picture so I never forget a face, or a memory? Or my collection of written journals which rival my photo albums in number and double in detail? My stack of yearbooks in tow since high school, or the camp newsletters that date back 20 years? All have made their way from Boston to Syracuse to Manhattan to LA, taking up room in the back of my closet and corners of my mind.

I also have a thing for T-shirts. At least the ones that I got in college or shortly thereafter, and represent a time in my life I'm still not quite ready to let go. I don't actually wear these shirts anymore - they are horribly out of style or stained or don't fit; yet they sit in drawers ready for the taking, tangible reminders of sorority formals, fraternity philanthropies, or simply a time when I was young and fit and constantly drunk on a cocktail mixed with cockeyed optimism and blissful ignorance.

For the last few years, I've thought about getting the shirts sewn into a quilt. I've found a few places that will do this online, but if any of my readers can personally recommend someone to do it, I'd feel better giving up the shirt off my back if I knew it was going into good hands.

I was cleaning my apartment yesterday and, in need of a rag, opened my bureau to see which shirts, if any, could be sacrificed. I must have about 40 abandoned T-shirts between the two drawers, but it was like opening a Pandora's box of memories, a late 90's time capsule yellowed with age yet too pristine to do my dirty work.

There's this shirt, from the DKE volleyball tournament, the first full week of school my senior year.


It was one of the most fun days of my college career, when boys were in abundance and my confidence was sky high. It would also turn out to be the day that Princess Diana died. The shirt was extra large on me - as was the style back then - and I cut the sleeves and the neckline to show a bit more skin. The shirt has a permanent brown ring under the neckline from when I used to wear it to the gym, and would hold a five pound weight on my chest to do crunches on the incline bench. (I still do those once in a while, but only when I am wearing a dark color.)

This shirt, promoting Jane Fonda's workout, is funny in that it wasn't meant to be ironic, not in the way old 80's and 90's t-shirts are considered hip now.

My grandmother used to volunteer at a Hadassah thrift shop, and she would often mail me care packages when something cute came through. This was in the mid 90's, when "used jeans" started to get popular, and once she heard that I was shopping with friends for vintage Levi's, she started sending me "gently worn" denim from the shop. Keep in mind, however, that the shop was in Sarasota, FL, and the donators were typically either 80 or dead. So the clothes didn't usually work on my college campus.

Grandma sent this shirt along with a purple velour sweatsuit that was so embarrassingly awful, at least until its doppleganger made an appearance in The Wedding Singer. That movie came out within weeks of my grandmother's death, and then I wore the sweatsuit until it literally fell apart. The shirt remains and still makes me laugh every time I look at it.

Finally, if you haven't realized by now, I have a small thing about my body. I'm obsessed with working out, and I am constantly, ten years later, still comparing myself to the physique I had at 21. That summer before my senior year, I was in the best shape of my life. I was exercising all the time, determined to go back to school with the best body on campus, and I'm sure it didn't hurt that I worked that summer in a restaurant, on my feet for hours each night.

This tiny little t-shirt was a badge of my work that summer. Guess, back then, was what like Gucci would mean to me now, and I bought this with money I had earned at the restaurant - the first time, I think, I purchased my own wardrobe, without any help from my parents.

Wearing this shirt, with newly flat abs underneath and paired with those popular platform sneakers, I felt like a superhuman Sporty Spice-meets-GI Jane. (With better teeth and hair, of course.) The picture of pop culture health, 1997's version of Wonder Woman. Ten years later, it's frumpy and faded, but always hoping to make a comeback.