AWOL Apparel
February 27th, 2007 | 
It has happened to all of us. You fall in love with a particular piece of clothing only to one day realize you have no idea where it is or what happened to it. To quote Warden Samuel Norton from The Shawshank Redemption, it just “up and vanished like a fart in the wind!” This has happened to me too many times to count, but there are three t-shirts of which I was particularly fond that are AWOL to this day.
AWOL T-Shirt #1: Limited Edition Final Fantasy VII Promotional, c. 1997, missing since unknown date (pictured at right). I mentioned in a previous post that I received this shirt as a gift for pre-ordering Final Fantasy VII. Displaying a huge video game character across my chest may have both exposed my geekiness and prevented me from getting any dates, but I loved this shirt nevertheless. I did some digging and saw that one of these shirts recently sold on eBay for $40.
AWOL T-Shirt #2: SparkNotes Promotional, c. 2000, missing since unknown date. Two years before SparkNotes was bought out by Barnes & Noble, the company gave away some 30,000 t-shirts in a promotional campaign. As a junior in high school and established internet nerd, I signed up to receive one of their shirts. It was navy blue with the SparkNotes logo on the front and on the back it said - here’s the kicker - “Taking the F out of ucking up.”
AWOL T-Shirt #3: Iowa Starbase Leadership Camp, c. 1995, missing since 2002. Apparently the Iowa STARBASE Leadership Camp (ISLC) doesn’t exist anymore (so says the omniscient Google). It was a camp sponsored by the Iowa Army National Guard for a hundred 5th grade students who demonstrated leadership traits. My class voted for me and so I got to attend Nerd Camp. I don’t remember much about the week except that I fell in love with another camper and we wrote each other letters for a while after camp was over. Anyway, I had my ISLC shirt forever… I clearly remember still wearing it freshman year of college even though it was a little snug and worn thin. I haven’t seen it since.
I know I am not the only one. Go ahead, tell me about your AWOL apparel.
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AWOL #1 - I have no idea
AWOL #2 - You put it in a pile of clothes for Goodwill a very long time ago. Some really cool WDM geek is probably still wearing it!
AWOL #3 - You wore that shirt until it fell apart and I threw it away.
Hey, have you seen the argyle blue sock that it’s mate is badly missing? Or how about…
once i lost a shirt in the back of sami’s car and i still hold to the belief that she wears it pretending not to know that it is mine. i hope she reads this, too, because if she returns it, i’ll take it. yeah, i’ll take it.
AWOL shirt# 1 - my first year in flag football i got a grey t-shirt that just said WDM flag football league. i loved it so much i convinced mom to let me wear it in a school picture, i think in 4th grade.
AWOL shirt # 2 - i had a perfect fitting NYC shirt that i got on the church trip to ground zero in NYC. it was candy-apple red and i loved it. last i saw of it i threw it in the dirty laundry pile sometime freshman year..
whoops there the second mom was deffinately me
AWOL #1> A sweet pink and yellow tie-dye shirt that i got probably around 1995 at Pufferbilly Days in Boone, but left it behind at a Hotel a few years later. I’m pretty sure i shed some tears.
AWOL #2> A purple San Diego Zoo T that I wore as much as possible since purple was my favorite color for much of my childhood. It had Chinese writing and two pandas on it.
AWOL #3> A light blue Hotel Del Coranado shirt i got when we had a family vacation to Disneyland.
I used to have this black zip-up hoodie that I got on a trip with friends in Chicago. I wore it ALL the time. Of course I brought it with me to Europe and I had it on the first night I went out once we arrived in Denmark. I had gotten hot and taken it off and set it behind us on this ledge in a bar. We I woke up the next morning, getting ready to leave for Norway I realized that I had left it there. I have never been able to find a suitable replacement.