It has happened to . 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 . 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.
