THE SHIRT SAGA

A couple of months ago I was very pleased to find a special shirt at the thrift store.  The theme for our Jane Austen-type ball this year is “Masquerade, Regency-style” and this shirt was perfect for my Younger Son:  black, with grommets and lacings-up down the front.  The only trouble was that it had three-quarter sleeves, so I would have to do some sewing to make the sleeves longer.

I washed the shirt, and then I thought maybe I had put it in a plastic bag to take with me to the store, to accurately match the fabric for sleeves.

This week we couldn’t find it.

No where, no how.  Not-in-the-house.

I kept thinking, “OOOH, I know where it is!”  But when I looked, it wasn’t there.

OOOH, I’ll bet it’s in the car!  Nope.

OOOH, I’ll bet it WAS in the car, and then it got brought back into the house with the groceries, and it’s down in the basement with the canned goods!  Uh-uh.

Oh, it was such a perfect shirt.  I couldn’t possibly find the time or the creativity to make another like it.  It was the best shirt in the WORLD.  Really.  Except for the sleeves.

Today I gave it up.  It truly couldn’t be in the house, or all of us who were tearing the house apart this week would have found it.  So I went to the thrift store to please-please-please find something the tiniest bit suitable for his costume.

And there it was—the exact same shirt, on the rack, at the thrift store.  Same brand, same size, same sleeves, our laundry smell; I’m pretty certain it was OUR shirt.  Hmmm, just a couple of weeks ago, I DID donate a bunch of things….

I was telling my Older Son this on our way home.

Him:  “So what did you have to pay to get it back?”

Me:  "Oh, I didn’t buy it—I found a better one!"