as we may blog

This morning as I reached for my sixth cup of coffee I discovered that the left elbow on my shirt had a hole in it. This was the third elbow in as many weeks to blow out.

I’m at a loss to explain it. This has never happened to me before. My line of work doesn’t require me to do anything with my elbows. I lean on them sometimes, but it’s not like I’m pulling down 15 rebounds a day. At this rate I’ll be working in wife beaters by mid-June.

The striped shirt in the foreground—less than 4 months old and really the nicest shirt I’ve ever owned—is the only one I can explain. I was riding home on the G train one Friday when a few burly construction workers sauntered on at Myrtle-Willoughby, clearly happy to be done with the day’s work. The largest of them, a pudgy, red-faced man who looked about 65, lurched toward me when the train started moving. He tried to control his fall by reaching out to steady himself on me, simultaneously aiming his denim for the seat immediately across from me (the convoluted spacing of seats on some NYC subways is a subject for another post). I thought this guy was going to crush my face, so I did a quick 90 degree pivot in the seat so that he fell toward my side. I can’t be sure, but I think that quick reaction caused my shirt gave way.

He executed his maneuver successfully. As he fell-sat, he exhaled an incredibly boozy breath in my face and made a hilarious groaning noise. The guys who got on the train with him made fun of both of us in Polish or some other language I couldn’t recognize. The burly guy and I exchanged some laughs and talked to each other without really understanding what we were saying. He shook my hand.

The other two shirts, though, who knows. I will say that the one that gave way today was of the same vintage as that blue shirt and is no great loss.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 at 7:44 pm and is filed under Fashion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.