My Father in Law Dresses Me
I’m not a clothes shopper. A little over a year ago I went to Fleet Farm and bought a flannel shirt, striped overalls and some long work pants. Since then I bought a pair of corduroys at Savers for 6 bucks. These are my clothing purchases of the last 18 months. Oh, and my father in law slipped me a Benjamin to buy a nice suit coat for special occasions. I got one at Target on clearance for 12 dollars. I’ve been meaning to give him the change.
Other than a couple sweatshirts and the overalls all my clothes fit in my dresser, and still every time we go to Goodwill I’ve got a pile of clothes to give away. I don’t get it either. But, as is so often the case, I have a couple theories.
#1 €“ Spontaneous Cotton Mass Reproduction. (SCMR) Sure it sounds crazy, but nobody believed me when I said Kenny Rogers would make a come back either. This morning he was on Fox News. ‘Nuff said.
#2 €“ Burglars. But not the kind that steal stuff, the kind that give stuff. Benevolent burglars. Benevolgurs. Burglarvents. Benevulgerlervents. You get the idea.
#3 €“ Father in law. He’s already set a precedent by slipping me the Benjamin. But I think I would notice if he had given me more money and told me to buy other articles of clothing. Unless he’s a master hypnotist and has hypnotized everyone in the family so that they don’t know he’s a hypnotist so they haven’t been able to warn me about his hypnotic powers. The other reason I think it might be his fault is that the majority of my clothing has Walhalla ND written on it. And he’s from Walhalla ND. You put two and two together and that’s what you get, Walhalla ND. 2+2=Walhalla ND.
Now I love Walhalla ND as much as the next guy, probably even a little more. But would I go out and buy Walhalla ND wear on my own? Not unless I was under someone’s hypnotic spell. And, no, we haven’t ruled that out. What I have noticed is that folks up here are into ‘logo wear.’ Although with the lack of graphic artists in the area (by area I mean ND) most of the logo wear relies a bit more heavily on the power of the written word. And as pastor’s like to point out whenever they read John 1, logos is Greek for word, so maybe it would be more appropriate to refer to the clothing here as ‘logos wear’ and not ‘logo wear.’ Either way, one of the most popular words to include in their logos wear is the word Walhalla. See where I’m going with this? Stay with me I’m about to bring it all home.
People make logos wear to share logos wear. All be it out of character for farmers, when it comes to quantity of logos wear to be manufactured, the farmers get possessed with a previously unidentified personality trait that we’ll call optimism. And this optimism takes control of their bodies just long enough for their mouthes to utter numbers like ‘five hundred’ or ‘one thousand.’ A week later a farmer living in a town of 700 receives a box with one thousand sweatshirts, hats, or t-shirts promoting his farm. In fact, about 100 farmers receive these boxes that they vaguely remember ordering in that fog of… what did we call it again? Oh yes, optimism. Now when they see their friend on the street or in the field they say, €œCome over to my pickup, I’ve got something for you.€ And then they give their unsuspecting friend a t-shirt. And then slide them five more for the family. Or if they see your truck by the bakery they may just slip a few onto the passenger’s seat. What a nice little surprise. It’s quite possibly the most compelling reason to lock your vehicle while within the city limits of Walhalla ND.
This is where I come in. I am that family member that hasn’t figured it out yet. Until now. As likely as SCMR and burglavenerbles are I’m going with choice #3, Father-in-law. And no, I don’t think he’s a hypnotist. I’m a victim of logos wear. And just a heads up here €“ next time you come to visit me, lock your car. Let’s stop the vicious cycle.