On Clothes and Demons

It was not a dark and stormy night. It was just another evening. We had put the tykes to bed and were getting ready to go out for dinner with friends.

I picked up the car keys and my wallet and was ready to go.

Then I realized that I am supposed to change my t-shirt since this is the same boring shirt I always wear when I go out. I was supposed to wear a new shirt, which I duly managed to find and wear after a few false dawns. This stop-start situation happened largely because of the variance in the definition of 'new' that I follow as opposed to the one my wife does.

For me, anything bought after I got married is new, as is anything bought later than something else of the same species. For example, a pair of shoes that I bought two years ago is new, while the pair I bought three years ago is not new. It is old.

My wife, on the other hand, applies the term 'new' exclusively to very recent (tending to immediate) acquisitions that are unused. For example, an article of clothing bought 4 months ago, albeit not worn, would not be new. Merely unused.

On my third attempt I got the correct 'new' shirt. I was ready once again.

Or so I thought.

"You aren't wearing that!" I wasn't sure whether this was a question, a statement, an exclamation or an instruction, since I was, quite evidently, wearing that.

"You wore those jeans yesterday too." While this was true, I did point out that typically jeans were worn more frequently than once. That's what made them jeans.

"But you also wore them last weekend."

This statement was neither here nor there though I declined to point out that I had been wearing these jeans for the better part of two months, as I did not deem it to be relevant to our conversation.

"These have marks on them."

This statement was wholly accurate. The left leg of the pair I had on had a fine specimen of one of the first doodles of our toddler. If he ever joined the league of Picasso et al., this pair of jeans would be worth a packet. Plus I thought such marks added character to jeans.

"These jeans are old."

This one really had me foxed. When we went to buy me a pair of jeans, we paid good money for this particular pair that looked like it had been lived in for a few years by a cowboy and then discarded, upon which, as a practical joke someone hung it up in a showroom to 'see what happens'.

What happened was that my wife loved it and we came back home with it. My protests that for this kind of money I should at least get something of which I am indisputably the first owner fell on deaf ears. Apparently wearing old, worn and cuffed jeans makes one look younger and hip-er.

My feeling that since now this pair was older, more worn and more cuffed, it would be better, was misplaced.

I duly re-attired myself.

At last, I was ready to go.

"I have nothing to wear." My wife had the wardrobe doors wide open. Inside, huge stacks of spun, woven and stitched yarn teetered dangerously.

'I have nothing to wear' could mean many things. It could be a question requiring reassurance, to answer which, one would need to delve into the arcane arts of female fashion and might entail pulling out chunks of the afore-mentioned woven, stitched yarn and show them to be 'clothes' or even 'nice clothes' that were appropriate for the evening; it could be a gripe, that would require one to come up with immediate plans (or plans in an as immediate a future as possible) for shopping expeditions to nullify it; it could be a grievance that would require one to admit one's fault on how the evening's excursion should have been better planned in order for us to have had the opportunity during the week to go to shop for something to wear for this particular evening.

Saying "You have so many clothes, wear anything." is just being callous. No one could say what the consequences could be if one were to say this. Even saying "Wear anything, you look pretty no matter what you wear." is inappropriate. While it may preclude one from incurring physical harm, it is widely understood to be of the same callous ilk as the previous statement.

No, the situation needs to be managed. I need to demonstrate some activity. I need to make suggestions. I need to be perceived as intelligent and knowing and above all caring.

There is more to this problem than meets the eye. It is a knotty one.

Women remember every item of clothing they have ever worn at any occasion. They also remember who was present at the said occasion. And the female law for wearing clothes is that no person should see you wearing the same clothes (or combination thereof) on more than one occasion. 'Person' here is described as any physical entity outside of your own body.

What I do to ensure we go out to dinner is to pray that in all the frenetic activity, the situation resolves itself for the evening.

Anyway, to ensure closure, we went shopping during the following week to prevent any similar happenings in the immediate future. We shopped, we returned home.

Upon returning home we noticed that things had changed. My wife opened the cupboard and saw that the old heaps of spun, stitched yarn have been transformed into clothes, a lot of which are wearable and some are almost new! We have come a full circle.

"I have too many clothes," she says. "Really! You should have told me and not let me buy anything today." She chides me, "While these are very nice, I don't actually need them."

Suddenly her shopping is my fault. My bafflement knows no boundaries. For years I was perplexed with this problem.

Then I realized. There is a shape-shifting demon that eats clothes and regurgitates them later sharing our domicile. A particularly vicious creature when it comes to putting husbands in tight corners, it takes sadistic pleasure in playing games on sensitive male minds - what with perfectly good clothes disappearing to reappear later innocently when the occasion had passed. For years I denied its existence. Now I know better.

You might think it is fanciful on my part, but then you must remember that when you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

"I must really stop buying clothes. There is no place to keep them. I think you should help me rationalize my clothes."

But that is another story.