99 Luft T-Shirts
How many shirts should one man own?
No, this isn't a Zen roan, or a lesser-known Peter Paul & Mary song. I'm really curious. How many?
The reason I ask is that today, I counted my husband's shirts. At least, I started to, but I stopped when I hit 99, before even getting to the closet.
This whole scenerio brings up some very disturbing questions.
1) why does one guy, who works in an office, need well over 100 shirts?
2) especially considering they all look more or less the same?
3) how lame does one's social life have to be for "Count Husband's Shirts" to make it to the top of your to-do list?
I was putting the shirts away because we recently did laundry. When I say "did laundry" of course I mean "did laundry" in the sense that I "cooked dinner" (that pizza didn't take itself out of the delivery box, after all).
To be precise, the laundry was delivered, folded, in neat, rectangular bags. This might sound strange, but we are in a city where, famously, you can have anything and everything delivered in an hour or less - from cat food to illegal drugs to transsexual midget hookers. Of course they'll deliver your underwear. (Some places are a one-stop call for all of these, but you have to know a pager number.)
Here, nobody has a washer or dryer, except for the filthy rich (who, ironically, are the only ones who aren't filthy b/c they can actually wash their clothes). So, to avoid spending all day in a laundromat, which is about as much fun as watching the UPN network, some nice people will come pick up your soiled laundry, and bring it back the next day, washed & neatly folded.
If you live in NYC, you think this is the most normal thing in the world. If you live virtually anywhere else, you probably think, quite rightly, that this is Why They Hate Us So Much.
The only problem with the "wash & fluff" (fluff? WTF?) is that they charge by the pound, so I've learned to wear my heavier clothes a little less often. Doing laundry can be very expensive, because my husband has about a million pounds of clothes. Unlike myself, he believes in actually washing things after he's worn them only one or seven times.
Personally, I'll wear same suit until it becomes threadbare without ever having it dry cleaned. I mean, really - why clean, when there's Febreeze? It gets out the odors, without ruining the filth. It's like being French, only without the smell. That is, you smell more like an artificial meadow and less like Drakkar Noir.
We don't have a proper laundry hamper, so we just kind of stack our (read: Paul's) dirty clothes in a pile in the corner of the bedroom. The general concept is that one of us calls J's Cleaners whenever "Mount St. Laundry" becomes taller than I am (in heels, that is). The other day, I knew it was time when one of the kittens was playing at the bottom of the pile, and it fell over, burying poor Seymour under a 5'6" pile of shirts and boxer shorts. Fortunately, he wasn't hurt. I'm not sure how I would have explained that to the vet. "See, Doc, it's like this ..."
Anyway. I got to wondering how many shirts P actually owns (I had the day off, and am clearly in need of a hobby). First, let me preface this story by stating that my husband is not what you would call a "Metrosexual" (would that he were...). THis is a man who has been known to get clothes out of dumpsters, without understanding why the argument "but, they were brand new!" doesn't make it okay.
Most of P's t-shirts (over 85 and counting in t-shirts alone) look, more or less, exactly alike. They come in various colors and feature logos of a full range of bands that have the word "Dead" in their names. Then there are the "ironic" t-shirts, like the one featuring a little kitten in sunglasses and pearls that says "Sex Kitten," or the "Where's The Beef" shirt from the Hart/Mondale campaign era, with the arrow pointing, suggestively, downward.
My question is, how many shirts is "too much"? Should I be worried? Seek professional help? Is there a book called Men Who Love Old T-Shirts Too Much and The Women Who Love Them (The Men - Not The T-Shirts, That Is ).
If not, I think I could write it. The funny thing is, in the entire time that P and I have been dating/married, I don't think I've known him to buy even one t-shirt. Maybe one or two he got as a gift, but should I be worried that he's secretly buying t-shirts on the street? Should I call Shirts Anonymous?
But seriously. How many shirts (t and otherwise) do most guys have? I'm really curious ...
No, this isn't a Zen roan, or a lesser-known Peter Paul & Mary song. I'm really curious. How many?
The reason I ask is that today, I counted my husband's shirts. At least, I started to, but I stopped when I hit 99, before even getting to the closet.
This whole scenerio brings up some very disturbing questions.
1) why does one guy, who works in an office, need well over 100 shirts?
2) especially considering they all look more or less the same?
3) how lame does one's social life have to be for "Count Husband's Shirts" to make it to the top of your to-do list?
I was putting the shirts away because we recently did laundry. When I say "did laundry" of course I mean "did laundry" in the sense that I "cooked dinner" (that pizza didn't take itself out of the delivery box, after all).
To be precise, the laundry was delivered, folded, in neat, rectangular bags. This might sound strange, but we are in a city where, famously, you can have anything and everything delivered in an hour or less - from cat food to illegal drugs to transsexual midget hookers. Of course they'll deliver your underwear. (Some places are a one-stop call for all of these, but you have to know a pager number.)
Here, nobody has a washer or dryer, except for the filthy rich (who, ironically, are the only ones who aren't filthy b/c they can actually wash their clothes). So, to avoid spending all day in a laundromat, which is about as much fun as watching the UPN network, some nice people will come pick up your soiled laundry, and bring it back the next day, washed & neatly folded.
If you live in NYC, you think this is the most normal thing in the world. If you live virtually anywhere else, you probably think, quite rightly, that this is Why They Hate Us So Much.
The only problem with the "wash & fluff" (fluff? WTF?) is that they charge by the pound, so I've learned to wear my heavier clothes a little less often. Doing laundry can be very expensive, because my husband has about a million pounds of clothes. Unlike myself, he believes in actually washing things after he's worn them only one or seven times.
Personally, I'll wear same suit until it becomes threadbare without ever having it dry cleaned. I mean, really - why clean, when there's Febreeze? It gets out the odors, without ruining the filth. It's like being French, only without the smell. That is, you smell more like an artificial meadow and less like Drakkar Noir.
We don't have a proper laundry hamper, so we just kind of stack our (read: Paul's) dirty clothes in a pile in the corner of the bedroom. The general concept is that one of us calls J's Cleaners whenever "Mount St. Laundry" becomes taller than I am (in heels, that is). The other day, I knew it was time when one of the kittens was playing at the bottom of the pile, and it fell over, burying poor Seymour under a 5'6" pile of shirts and boxer shorts. Fortunately, he wasn't hurt. I'm not sure how I would have explained that to the vet. "See, Doc, it's like this ..."
Anyway. I got to wondering how many shirts P actually owns (I had the day off, and am clearly in need of a hobby). First, let me preface this story by stating that my husband is not what you would call a "Metrosexual" (would that he were...). THis is a man who has been known to get clothes out of dumpsters, without understanding why the argument "but, they were brand new!" doesn't make it okay.
Most of P's t-shirts (over 85 and counting in t-shirts alone) look, more or less, exactly alike. They come in various colors and feature logos of a full range of bands that have the word "Dead" in their names. Then there are the "ironic" t-shirts, like the one featuring a little kitten in sunglasses and pearls that says "Sex Kitten," or the "Where's The Beef" shirt from the Hart/Mondale campaign era, with the arrow pointing, suggestively, downward.
My question is, how many shirts is "too much"? Should I be worried? Seek professional help? Is there a book called Men Who Love Old T-Shirts Too Much and The Women Who Love Them (The Men - Not The T-Shirts, That Is ).
If not, I think I could write it. The funny thing is, in the entire time that P and I have been dating/married, I don't think I've known him to buy even one t-shirt. Maybe one or two he got as a gift, but should I be worried that he's secretly buying t-shirts on the street? Should I call Shirts Anonymous?
But seriously. How many shirts (t and otherwise) do most guys have? I'm really curious ...
posted by Marguerite at 6:38 PM
3 Comments:
That many T-shirts does seem a bit excessive, however I think boys just have an exorbitant amount of t-shirts. I think Brian has way too many and yet he's always saying he doesn't have enough shirts. They're weird about such things.
Morgan totally has the t shirt collection of yore, but in the year i had a sewing machine (note "had" because i broke it like an idiot), i successfully depleted at least half of his collection by cutting them apart and sewing them back together in cute patterns that would fit me while he was at work. then i'd put them back in his drawer, as though when we tried to put them on later and found they fit over his head and ended just above his nipples, he wouldn't notice. let's just say many an argument was ended with "but it looks so much cuter on me!"
okay
a) I regret nothing!
and
b) do you know what M's solution was to this dilemma? to MAKE A QUILT out of the shirts. I feel that if I were the kind of man that would allow my shirts to be made into a quilt, then she wouldn't have married me anyway. perhaps M, you should write a book called "Making A Quilt Out of Your Husbands Treasured T-Shirt Collection and 49 Other Viciously Emasculating Acts for New Wives."
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