T-shirts

I've been wearing t-shirts since 1998, when I was posted to northern California for 6 months and realised my winter clothes in Los Angeles were not warm enough for summers in San Francisco.

I've always bought Hanes t-shirts, and even while I've been in the UK I've continued to buy my clothes in the States (primarily because it's so much cheaper).  But recently -- through a lack of planning -- I was forced to purchase some t-shirts in the UK, and I found them to be less soft, more scratchy, and they made me feel much more manly.

It took me a while to realise that what I was experiencing was not some primitive, barbarian need to wear inferior clothing.  It was the memory of my father's t-shirts, which my brother and I occasionally wore as nightshirts when we were small.

There are many ways to measure a man, but the only way for a man to measure himself is against his father. 40 years ago, his shirt swallowed me whole. Today I know, even though he isn't here and these aren't his shirts, I still feel like a man.