matching attire.
I don’t know exactly why I thought of this. Perhaps it is because here in Taiwan, I see way too many people wearing matching clothes. It’s pretty ridiculous that many couples find this practice acceptable and on their weekend outings will be sporting, at the very least, a matching shirt, if not matching pants and matching accessories to go with them.
I can think of two such instances during my career as a student where I wore the exact same t-shirt as someone else. Of course, I am excluding events where we all needed to wear the same shirt, like club shirts for a club activity or something. No, I am talking about random occurrences of matching wardrobe.
The first was in high school, I’d guess senior year. Senior year because it involves Thrice’s album The Artist in the Ambulance, which was released during the summer of 2003. I had never pre-ordered an album in my life before, but I really liked Thrice, and Fuj had turned me onto the fact that if you pre-ordered it, not only did it not cost anything extra, but you also got a free t-shirt. You also got a deluxe version of the album that was pretty cool. Seemed win-win to me.
So I pre-ordered it, as did he. The shirt was actually pretty decent, design-wise, although it was printed on possibly the cheapest shirt in the world. Anyway, it was an olive-drab shirt with a red cross on the front (like a medic, get it?) that said “Thrice” above it, and on the back it just had “The Artist in the Ambulance” printed in black across the top.
I wore it randomly whenever it came up in my shirt rotation. Well, of course, one day, I showed up at school, and so did Fuj, and we found out that we were both wearing the same damn shirt. It wasn’t exactly a big deal, but in high school you’re always afraid of every little embarrassing thing, plus since we were in the same social group we were always hanging out right by each other and so the similar shirts stood out a lot more than if we had just passed by each other once in the hall or something.
I remember at some point during recess Shandra Shinno suddenly realized it and she announced it loudly, “Oh! You guys are wearing the same shirt! That’s so cute! Did you guys like…plan that?” Fuj and I may have literally facepalmed, it was pretty bad.
The other time was in college, and it also involved a Thrice shirt, somehow. One of those weird coincidences of the universe. Oddly enough, though, not the same Thrice shirt. This shirt was one I had bought at Hot Topic, it was a black shirt with blue print. The design was like a box, and on the left hand side there was the Thrice logo thing, then on the right hand side it said “Thrice” in biggish letters and I believe some song lyrics underneath it.
I’ve tried Googling for images of either shirt but didn’t find anything. I know I have both of them still, unfortunately they’re back in America.
Anyway, I was walking up the outside stairs in Kuykendall Hall, on the side by the Campus Center building. I think I was going to my Anthropology 152 class which would have made it freshman year, but I’m not certain. I was wearing said Thrice shirt. As I passed the second floor’s hallway doors, continuing onward towards the third floor, I heard someone call out to me.
It was Christian Cook. Another Kauai kid. Truth be told, I didn’t really like him. Nothing against him personally, I actually didn’t know him all that well, but when we had spoken, he had always been pretty nice to me. He was one of those people I knew better on MSN than in real life, at some point during high school he had made it to my MSN list and we had chatted occasionally. He always seemed alright.
But I didn’t like him. And since this whole thing would be nothing without confessions that I would have never told anyone at the time, I guess I should tell you why. Back in high school, for a period in time, I had the biggest crush on Roxanne ever. I guess it’s not such a huge secret since I have told her that since, although I don’t think she really believed me.
It was true, though. And for a time, when I was first getting to know her and develop this crush, I found out she was dating this Christian Cook person. He was a Kapaa kid, so I didn’t even know him, but from then on I had a nice bit of hatred for this guy. I remember one time Roxanne and I were in class, she was drawing in the little day planner thing the school gave us, and on the weekend she wrote something like “Hanging out with Christian” and drew some hearts, and man, you better believe I went home bitter about him.
Not that I would have had a chance with her or anything but yeah, that’s digging into some high school angst that I’m sure I’ll be better suited to write about at another time.
Anyway, the point is, I really never liked him. Christian, if you ever read this, not that it mattered to you, since we weren’t even really acquaintances, and not that I ever let my feelings show or something, but hey man sorry for hating on you just because you were dating a crush of mine during high school. We were all stupid kids.
This was at least two years after the fact, but yeah, I still didn’t like him. But he called out to me. I turned, and looked. He was sitting outside the doorways that led to Kuykendall’s inner hallway. He said nothing at first, but he ripped his jacket open, in a Superman-like fashion. He pointed at his chest, and I saw that what he was revealing to me was the fact that he, too, was wearing the exact same Thrice t-shirt.
He let out a “Yeah!” and gave a thumbs up. Like I said, he was always nice enough to me, and hey, we had similar taste in music, I guess. I didn’t really react, I just gave him like a head nod and kept climbing the stairs.
I don’t think I wore either of those shirts much after that.
