transcontinental tshirt.

i'm taking a class called global economics and world economy. in the class for the past two weeks, we're supposed to have been reading a book that my professor refers to as simply "Travels of a T-shirt." which, made me excited. excited enough to pick up the book yesterday and then to be letdown by the rest of the title ("in the Global Economy") and then question why i thought it could even be mildly entertaining judging the rest of the books i've bought for the class (Global Capitalism, The Ascent of Money, Free Trade Under Fire, The Market System...).

regardless, it made me think. unfortunately, not so much about the global economy but of a traveling tshirt i myself had the chance to wear. i bought it, ironically, with some money i got for selling a book back, at the beginning of the summer. it somehow became everything my summer was... on the days i had off, i would put on my lime green bathing suit, my cutoffs, and the tshirt and make it a point to only go places i could ride my bike to. happily i would ride downtown to take pictures, ride to the market, ride to the river with friends, ride to lunch dates... it was perfect. the tshirt was lightweight, loose-fitting, and kept up with all of my adventures. one day in particular i rode to 711 to pick up a slurpee before going to belle isle with a friend. i got 20 ounces of everyflavorbutcoke as always, and when i came outside i realized that it would be quite hard to ride all the way there with one hand. i drank down the slurpee enough to tilt it into my cupholder and headed down to the river. once the road flattened out, i felt safe enough to reach down and grab the slurpee and continue enjoying it. i was slurpping away when BAM! a surprise patch of richmond cobblestone popped up. and consequently my slurpee top popped off. and my bright reddish slurpee popped up all over my tshirt. i laughed. hard. and then got out my tide pen and took care of my tshirt and went on to have a lazy day relaxing on the rocks by the river with some good conversation.

my tshirt, i think, enjoyed my travels. i wore it in the airport when i flew off to start the best semester of my life... and then continued to wear it for the first 4 days in spain until heathrow airport decided to send me the rest of my luggage.

my tshirt came with me to morocco. one evening we were out on the beach at sunset and decided to go for a swim. i tucked my tshirt and cutoffs safely beneath my rainbows and dove in in my limegreen bathing suit. after a while, we got out and ran up to our stuff... to find the only thing that had somehow blown away was my tshirt. i ran in the direction of the wind and searched up and down the beach. after a while i finally resigned myself to realizing that my travels with the tshirt were done, and our travels from then on would assume different paths. i think about it every now and then, where it may be, who could be wearing it and what they are doing in it, my transcontinental tshirt.

and i smile.



banana!