Elegy for a T-Shirt

Travel back with me to Fall 1995--Windows '95 was an innovation instead of a punchline, we were all buying actual, physical CDs of Smashing Pumpkin's Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Monica Lewinksi was but a White House intern, and you could carry pocket-knives onto planes for 9/11 wasn't even a twinkle in our eyes.

That autumn, I, like near every other child in Centralia, WA, participated in Youth Soccer.  My team's sponsor was the local logging company North Fork Timber, or NFT.  I got a green t-shirt out of it that hung on me loosely and baggy.

Now, it is a fact commonly acknowledged that green t-shirts last for roughly ever, and hence can outlast marble statues, governments, cockroaches, and twinkies.  Something about the green die, I guess.  Thus my senior year of High School, I discovered that this ancient t-shirt in the back of my drawer was not only in pristine condition, but now fit me snugly and perfectly. I began to wear it all the time.

I liked the t-shirt so much that I took it with me to the Dominican Republic MTC. I posed in it with this Dominican paramilitary traffic cop in downtown Santo Domingo.

I wore it on P-Days throughout my LDS Mission to Puerto Rico.

It wasn't until my senior year of college that I noticed I perhaps over-wore it, and so maybe I should save it for only special occasions.

Hence, I made especial sure to wear it on the Great Wall of China...

...and during my internship in Mexico...
 

...and especially in front of the Eiffel Tower...

...the British Museum...

...in Italy...

...and of course inside the Roman Colosseum.

But by the time I got back from Italy, I realized that this beloved t-shirt, now nearly 2 decades old, was so thread-bare, so worn out, that it could no longer travel with me respectably.

Now, I knew any thrift-store would just throw it away, and I would not suffer such a loyal t-shirt to be discarded like some common dishrag!  No, a t-shirt of this legacy required something more honorable, something more commensurate to its dignity...

So tonight, we gave it a proper Viking Funeral.

The blessed shirt didn't even require lighter-fluid to burst into flames of glory.

All joking aside, yes it's just a t-shirt...but like my childhood self, that shirt traveled far more widely than I ever thought possible, far longer than it was ever intended or expected to.  It came to represent not only where I come from, but how far I've come since.  Now cracks a noble heart.  Fare thee well sweet NFT youth soccer t-shirt, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.