From Opal to The Little Mermaid in 20 Short Years...

Okay, confession time.

Brace yourself.

I did not join a sorority in college.

There.  It's out now.  

Whew.

And with further honestly, it really wasn't a hard choice for me.  I spent three years in high school on dance team (that's DRILL team for you Texans.  Kinda the same thing only without the cowboy hat.)  With 20 ish girls in one space for days and weeks on end, the drama factor was fairly significant.

Throw in another 100+ fine Southern ladies, and, well, I figured, statically speaking, the drama factor would increase 100+ times.

My brother is faithful to remind me that I was, from his perspective, a willing participant in said drama.  Which is probably totally true.  I remember approximately a quarter of what actually occurred in high school.  

Yeah, dementia.  It's gonna be super cool.

Anyway, I did live with some amazingly awesome sorority members.  Girls.  I know.  Scandalous.  Greeks and Independents cohabitating like that.  But what I noticed the most about their world, besides Chapter nights when I had the apartment to myself, was they LOVED tee-shirts.  Did not matter the event, everyone got a tee-shirt.  

My freshman year, Auburn was hit by a hurricane.  Right?  A landlocked city getting hit by a hurricane.  Opal.  Possibly the greatest massive storm name ever.  

My roommates and I stayed inside our apartment.  The "Guys from Across the Way" came too.  We ate pizza and played cards.  There was probably some beer there somewhere but HAND ON A BIBLE, I didn't drink.  

(The drunkest I've ever been was on Valium prior to transferring embryos into my jacked up uterus.)

(Seems like a waste really.  Especially when you consider there were about ten people, in scrubs and masks, there to witness it.)

(I may have suggested to our RE that it would be fun to get a little jiggy with it on Valium.)

(He laughed.  Chris blushed.)

The point was even that hurricane was considered a tee-shirt worthy event.  "I survived Hurricane Opal!"  Those tee-shirts were proudly worn.  And worn.  And worn.  Really, it kinda got sad when guys who were clearly on the seven year plan continued to wear those things.  Grey hair, beer bellies and all.

Chris was part of another cult of tee-shirts.  Band.  AND, the band fraternity.  Which is not part of the Greek system.  But it's a thing.  

(Can I get a high-five for leaving the "it is, though, part of a Geek system" joke alone?)

Chris had quite a collection.  A gigantic tub full of the things that we carted from Alabama, to Georgia, to Oklahoma, to south DFW and then up to north DFW.  Where he met a lovely woman who took that tub and put the tee-shirts together into a KING SIZE quilt blanket.

For the most part, though, I considered our relentless collection of tee-shirts to be something in the past.  I mean, sure, we gathered a nice supply at OU but nothing I really viewed as obnoxious.  

But, oh, how so very wrong I was.

Because I have found the organization who loves creating tee-shirts more than an sorority or band fraternity ever considered.

Over-privileged children with access to online tee-shirt vendors.

Not just band kids either.  Because...

...look what just sashayed into my house Sunday?

In case you can't tell, this is tee-shirt #2,864.

Here is a picture of drawer 1 in our EVER GROWING tee-shirt collection.

And drawer 2.  Which is the plain tee-shirt drawer.  You know, the ones he might wear if he were pretending to be a grown man.  Instead of one of those seven-year planners in college.  

See, here's what happens:  every year, there's a new marching show, a new competition, a new section.  And each of those gets a shirt.  Chris, along with the other directors, gets one from each of those.  Flutes, tubas, percussion, clarinets.

It's not that they're not precious.  I think there was one that said, "Every time you miss a dot, a kitten dies."  

Pure poetry.

It's just that, low-ball estimate here, I'd say he gets ten new tee-shirts a year.  

That means, we've added 40...FORTY...tee shirts to the 20 or so we collected at OU.  

And I just need to tell you, that "Little Mermaid" tee shirt is the straw that broke this Independent's back.  

I. Can't. Take It. Anymore.

Tee-shirt quota REACHED.  

The best part is, "we" don't wear the tee-shirts from years past.  Last year, for sure, makes an appearance in the early days of band camp.  Before the new ones are ordered and produced.  But beyond that, no way.  Because, let's be honest, no one wants to be seen wearing their "I survived Hurricane Opal" tee-shirt three years later.

Clearly, we're more mature that that.  

"The Little Mermaid" needs its moment to shine, after all.