NOSTALGIA

Saturdays, as I've mentioned, are my "real" cleaning days usually. Well I went up to help our young ones and made a discovery: found about five shirts stuffed in the back of our son's drawer. When I pulled them out he didn't seem too concerned. Looked like his little nostrils flared a bit. Maybe disappointment? There were no words coming from his mouth.
"We need to wash these so you can wear these again. I'd forgotten about them," I smiled as I shook them out.
As I continued helping, I realized that at least two of those shirts he didn't care for.
"The kids are gonna waugh (still trouble with Ls) at me," he told us one morning before school. Kids these days don't know style. The shirt was "Hot" as they say, to me.
Sitting there in the quiet of his partially cleaned room I thought about it. Then I thought about me... back in the day... when I didn't like something I had to wear.
I would mix up a concoction of whatever I could get my hands on in the kitchen and mix it all up and put it on an area of the hated clothing. And hope that it would be bad enough to not come out. Hoped my mom couldn't "Shout" it out. Most times she couldn't. Or I would stain a dress on the Sunday mornings that the "Old Folks" choir was singing. I think they called them the "Seniors". I didn't want to go those Sundays and watch them rock different ways and sing out the hymnals ALL morning. When they would sing, "I'll Fly Away" for the 200th time I was hoping they would really fly away out that prism glass near the organ. Or "Pass Me Not" for the thousandth time- "Please Jesus don't pass them by. Stop and pick 'em up!" Okay I went on a tangent didn't I. Memories. I tell ya!
So I empathized with our son. I decided to wash them and pass two of them on to someone else. Aren't I the best? He's lucky. My mom woulda gave me a 20-minute spill about how little kids in Africa didn't have any clothes and I should appreciate the thick, wooled, turtlenecks she bought me. I would have lost teeth had I informed her that the little African children didn't need the clothes- they were HOT! Like my neck was in those shirts!!