BY MEAGAN HU

In print | Published May 1, 2008

If I’m ever wearing a thrift store buy around my dad, I always make sure to let him know, especially the price (“Fifty cents. It was the half off sale!”). He hates it when I buy used things, so naturally I must point it out for him when I do. For me, buying clothes from thrift or vintage stores is ideal because the clothes are usually cheaper and more unique. Plus, it’s less wasteful than buying new.

But it’s not that my dad prefers me to spend more money than necessary, or that he dislikes the environment. Both untrue! When my parents first came to the States in the 1970s, most of the things they could afford were second-hand. They were strangers in this country, using other strangers’ dishes to eat off of and lamps to read from. Now that they can afford things to imbue with their own experiences, untouched by any previous owner’s past, why would they want to go back to buying used things?

I never had to endure the hardships my parents faced in this country, nor do I have very clear memories of them. Perhaps they just did a good job of hiding them from me. But my dad’s stance does resonate with me in the sense that my most favorite used clothes are the ones that I have the most personal connection with, especially the ones I got from my mom. There’s the maroon, plaid button-down that I found stowed away in her closet, which I remember her wearing in some of my baby photos. And my yellow T-shirt that says, “Send in the clones, we have the buffers” that my mom got in grad school. I imagine it was one of those shirts she got at a science conference or with an order of lab equipment and wore on weekends to do yard work or when she was playing with me.

There are some clothes that we wear to keep up appearances, and others that we wear merely for ourselves, as reminders of a bygone time, as a badge of honor or a memorial to something or someone. The best items of clothing in that regard are those that are somehow temporally associated with significant events, infused with a sense of history. They’re more than mere mementos, and don’t necessarily need to drip with sentimentality either. Take my dad again. Never one to wax nostalgic, his favorite piece of clothing is this gaudy, medieval-themed T-shirt he sent away for after spending weeks to reach 50-million points on a computer pinball game.

As I am on the cusp of graduating, the ideas of memory and remembering are at the forefront of my mind. Right now, I don’t know which memories and events’, years from now, will stand out most from the past four years. It’s hard to tell why we remember the things we do. But there are some events I know I won’t forget, and I have the T-shirt to prove it.

In the spring of my sophomore year, Les Savy Fav performed an epic show at Olde Club, no doubt thanks to tubby Tim Harrington’s beastly, unpredictable stage presence. After the show, Linda and I wanted shirts from the show, but the band had already begun putting everything away into their van, which was parked I don’t know where. But Mickey did. So he sprinted out into the freezing cold while Linda and I stayed back in Olde Club eating cheese puffs. When he returned with our shirts, sweat had somewhat crystallized on the gloriously full beard he maintained that semester.

The shirt is this light, slate color with the words “Les Savy Fav Swathmore [sic] February 18, 2006” encircling a… I still don’t know. Turtle? Snail? Banana slug? It instantly became my most worn shirt because the color matched everything and it fit perfectly, just a little oversized like I like it. During finals, I think I wore it consecutively for almost a week. (It was finals, okay!) That summer, when Linda was in Paris and I was in Taipei, we decided to start a photo blog to document our adventures. As different as our photos were, that shirt would occasionally pop up in both of our posts. It became the sisterhood of the traveling Les Savy Fav shirt.

I know I slumped a little sophomore year, but when I start unraveling all the memories associated with this T-shirt, that year actually turns out to be pretty fun. And that’s how I’d like to remember it. Years from now when I’ve hopefully settled into a new life, the people, places and even I, will probably be quite different. My Les Savy Fav shirt will have become faded and threadbare by then, the perfect item for a vintage clothing store. But I’d rather endure another vicious mosh-pit at age forty than give up this shirt. Besides, all the meaning associated with it would be lost on anyone else but me anyways. After all, who’s ever heard of ‘Swathmore’?

Meagan is a senior. You can contact her at mhu1@swarthmore.edu

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