All dressed up with no clambake to go to

I’m sure many men out there would agree with my position “I don’t like shopping.” But I’m guessing few have taken it to my same extreme, “I don’t shop.”

That I’ve been fortunate enough to manage this has required a tradeoff. Andrea and I have an implicit agreement that, because I don’t shop, I’ll wear whatever she buys. Clown pants? Fine. Punk skater look? No problem. Anything but sweaters. I don’t know why I don’t like them, I just hate the way they cling to my elbows.

It turns out that what Andrea just loves is the preppy New England look straight out of the J. Crew catalogue – seersucker pants, plaid pants, pastel pants, pants with little lobsters or sailboats or seahorses on them, woven belt, boat shoes, white polo shirts. The sweater goes over the shoulders, so I can live with that. She likes this look a lot, and now I could go to 8 or 10 clambakes in a row without risk of embarrassment that I would be caught in the same outfit twice. The problem is this: we don’t go to any clambakes. We haven’t been invited to a clambake since moving to Ohio. Even when we lived in New England we might go to only two a year. 

So I have a closet full of unused pastel pants. I can’t wear this stuff to work – the Miller Time guys who do the real work at my company wouldn’t let me get away with that. And they’re too nice to bum around in on the weekends. I’m not sure when, if ever, I should wear them.

And the clambake clothes are just a few of the articles that I have no idea when or where I am supposed to wear them. I had a pair of flip-flops with orange straps that I kept trying to wear out on the weekend and Andrea would say “those don’t go with your outfit” (note: “outfit” here is defined very loosely to include stained shorts and a crummy t-shirt). After twenty or thirty tries, I finally said “what exactly am I supposed to wear these with?” Andrea bought me a bright orange t-shirt shortly thereafter.

I now wear that orange t-shirt, stained shorts and matching flip flops almost every day between Memorial Day and Labor Day – it’s the only summer “outfit” that I know matches. Unfortunately, the orange t-shirt is the exception. I’m mentally stuck with many articles of clothing, so I just end up wearing the same 5-10 outfits to work and another 5-10 while bumming around on the weekend. I have a pair of paisley – yes, paisley – shoes that I couldn’t match to an outfit to save my life.

And so my closet is kind of like the warehouse at the factory where I work, where the inventory is classified A, B, or C based on how much is used. Like the warehouse, I have the A-movers, the stuff that I wear every day. The B-movers are the slow movers but at least I know what to do (hey, that restaurant is funky-dressy! I have an outfit for that!). The C-movers - the preppy gear and sweaters and paisley shoes – well, they just hang there unused waiting for the accountants to write them off.