Mama J kept telling me I needed new short sleeve shirts.

She went so far as to try to find me some online, but to no avail.

I wasn’t too concerned; my short-sleeved shirts seemed to be serving me just fine.

Sure, one or two had the collar coming apart.

And one or two had such bad sweat stains under the arms that you really didn’t want to shake them too badly around the table or the food might have taken on distinctly salty flavor.

One day it sort of dawned on me that while my shirts seemed to be serving me okay, they were probably making a lot of extra work for Mama J.

Upon which I started looking for new short sleeve shirts.

Now, if you’ll excuse me for just a bit, I need to eat a small helping of crow before I go farther.

Because it seems to me that I remember the boys very emphatically stating, while still in their teens, that certain shirt brands fit better than others.

At the time, I passed it off as peer pressure and didn’t worry about it much longer.

But it seems that I am a bit pickier than I used to be about which brand I wear for some reason. 

Different body shape may have some to do with it.

So there, got that meal polished off, and it wasn’t to terribly bad after all.

The day came when we drove past a neat little store that I like to stop in every once in a while in the town just south of where we live.

Mama J was with me and said she’d stay in the truck while I stepped in to look for short sleeve shirts.

I saw three immediately that I liked.

And they were the right brand.

That store has always been somewhat dimly lit, and when I was there, it was no different.

The yellow shirt caught my eye first. 

I don’t think I’ve ever worn yellow, unless I can’t remember. 

Of course, advertising companies say color makes all the difference and that yellow in a store name means cheap, but I didn’t figure that was the case here.  At least it didn’t cost any less than the others I was looking at.

I couldn’t quite make out the design on the yellow one, so I bent in for a closer look. 

Ah yes. 

Little yellow suitcases with neat little handles splashed all over in a random hodge podge.

I thought it might make a good vacation shirt, besides a good work shirt also.

It was the first shirt I pulled off the rack at home to wear the next day.

And that’s when I found out that the light must have been really realy bad in the part of the store where it was hanging. 

Of course it was. 

Had to be. 

But somehow, maybe sometime on the way home or maybe during the night while it was hanging in my closet, those suitcases turned into beer mugs full to the brim with a good head of foam on top of that.

Now what.