Fashion Sense

For Christmas this year, my mom bought my husband this sweatshirt:

Out of the many endearing qualities that drew me to fall in love with the man I married, his sense of fashion is not one of them. Life is a series of trade-offs, so this is something I have come to expect, and in the greater scheme of things, I can live with. The fact that he is hopelessly color blind doesn't make things any easier on the poor guy (although I did discover early on in our relationship that it can be the source of a limitless wealth of entertainment, as he is totally reliant on his friends and loved ones to be truthful when occasionally asked the color of certain items: it's much more fun to tell him that "No dear, that woman's dress isn't red at all - it's actually cobalt blue...wow...you really are screwed up, aren't you? Poor bastard.")

Generally speaking, he does OK, as his wardrobe consists almost entirely of t-shirts and jeans. Every once in a while, say, on a day when the laundry is piled up and his collection of t-shirts has been depleted, he will try to improvise and the results are never pretty.

One previous incident that comes to mind involved a woman's sized medium t-shirt with the ubiquitous "" emblazoned on the front (it was given to me, shut up). Totally impervious to the atrocity I was about to discover, I came upon him in the kitchen, making coffee. Speechless, I stared at him in abject horror.

He tried to play it off as the hem of the shirt was making its way up and over his mid-section. "What?"

Words escaped me. "No."

He recognized the tone in that single word, hung his head, and disappeared to find a different shirt.

This morning he decided to wear his new half-zip pullover. As Natalie made her way down to the kitchen where he was again, making coffee, she approached him cautiously.

"Dad?" She asked sweetly. "Is that what you're going to wear to work?"

"Yep." he grunted back. To say that he is not a morning person is something of an understatement.

"Don't you think you might want to wear a t-shirt under that?" she offered.

"I'm fine kid, just worry about yourself. OK?" Clearly he was losing patience.

Conscious that she was treading on thin ice, she paused to choose her words carefully.

And then blurted out "But you look stupid."

Recognizing that he had once again suffered a bitter defeat at the hands of the females in his life, he retreated back upstairs to find a shirt to go under his pullover.

I'm so proud of that girl.