Evolution Of Man

Talk about being the perfect counterpoint to the previous post:

I have an extensive t-shirt collection. I bulked up a bit on dress shirts, slacks, jackets, and suits due to my requirements of being well dressed for my court internship last semester. My dress casual clothes have taken quite a beating though. Through age and wear many have small holes, rips, missing buttons, or just don't fit well anymore. For the good polo shirts or short sleeve button downs I'm usually a Kolhs or Galyans kind of guy. They have relatively inexpensive and decent looking type of clothes. That is who and what I normally am, a wash-and-wear kind of guy.

But I needed some new decent shirts for the summer and decided to see what a new favorite had in stock: The Men's Wearhouse! TMW was where I had acquired the suits, dress jackets, dress shirts, and ties that make me appear like a lawyer instead of a computer guy or band jock. I have to admit, when I wore the gray suit I felt like I could kick legal ass! Here's your brief, objection hearsay, counsel is badgering the witness, the fact of the matter is you murdered your wife! Yes, the clothes made the upgraded man to an extent. I wondered what they had in casual wear.

I immediately zoomed towards the Hawaiian shirts. The kind that were expensive and made of silk instead of my typical cheesy, exploded peacock, rayon shirts. Okay, they're likely floral print shirts, not Hawaiian, but my brain translates all such shirts to Hawaiian! TMW had this nice silk button shirts. TMW had this nice...ummm...I want to call them really thin, short sleeved, sweaters, but my life experience doesn't provide me with the proper vocabulary word to name them. The prices on all the good stuff was easily twice what I would normally pay; however, I have to accept that someday I'm not going to be man with the old Ford Ranger pickup truck, but the man with Chrysler 300C (got HEMI?) luxury sedan. At times I'm going to have to be classy or at least look the part. It feels good to sometimes be dressed well, but not formally like at a party.

Luckily I avoided all the things that were dry-clean only. Still, none of the things I picked up were the 'wash-and-wear' variety. 'Wash-separately,' 'dry flat', 'dry clean preferred', and other such damned nonsense. I hate having to pay attention to laundry. I like my simple rules of: color wash cold and whites wash warm. It's easy to follow! This year I've slowly acquired things that I need to pay attention to before I do laundry. Damn that's annoying!

At least I picked up one nice shirt (gulp loosing manliness quotient) on clearance and also had a coupon for the rest of the sale items (am I fiscally crafty or still loosing manliness points here?). This legal experience is forcing me to be professional and appear in ways not normal for me.

I'm evolving in ways that are becoming more clear to me as I age. I can't always be what I was before. That's just being stagnant and I refuse to be that. It's okay though, even when I get the 300C I'll still have CDs of Metallica, Van Halen, and AC/DC blasting through the stereo. I may evolve somewhat, but I intend to stick to my roots.