One year for her birthday, my sister received a shirt that was so absolutely awesome that it has come to symbolize my older sibling worship. Even twenty years later, we can still easily recall the details of The Coolest Shirt Ever without much prompting. I got the idea for this blog entry last week, and went on a fact-finding mission.
Me: Do you remember that shirt with the girl on the sailboat?
Sis: Yes! It was a white shirt with red, blue, and yellow accents.
Me: Right. Do you remember who gave it to you?
Sis: No idea. Not mom?
What made this shirt so enviable to me was not so much the sailboat motif - I can count on one hand how many times my family and I have been on a boat together. In recent years we bandied about the idea of going on a casino cruise in Florida, but it quickly petered out in favor of a more traditional family activity of simply doing nothing at all.
No, what made this The Coolest Shirt Ever was the girl's boom box on the sailboat. Inside the snaps held a battery pack that when pressed omitted some sort of tinny-sounding song. My sister and I can't remember the specific tune, but it quickly became her favorite shirt. It was interactive! It was sea worthy! To this day I have to admire what an adult my mother was - to remove and return the battery pack after each washing. I can promise you that if I owned The Coolest Shirt Ever today, the battery pack would have lasted approximately three laundry loads before it went through the wash and was ruined.
Like any youngest of three, my clothing choices were almost 100% hand-me-downs. I knew if I would just bide my time, my sister would eventually outgrow The Coolest Shirt Ever and it would be mine. Victory was bittersweet, though. Despite my mom's diligence, the music had stopped playing and the battery pack was removed by the time it was tucked in my drawer.
It's stupid the things we remember from childhood. This shirt still reminds me of how I felt growing up. Simply put, my big sisters could do no wrong. If they liked it, well then it was the Coolest Thing Ever and all I could do was to be patient while I waited for it to be mine.
