SUNDAY SHORTS?

Jeff's cargo shorts are in horrible repair.....pockets ripping out, faded fabric, just generally ready to toss them in the bin.  So, I head with joy in my heart to T.J. Maxx and with even further glee, find some perfectly lovely cargo shorts....2 pair no less in his size for $12.99!  Super cheap!  Good to work in (we own our own furniture/bedding/appliance/repair vacuum store and this is what he wears (he claims until December but it's really just until it drops to the 40's), but anyway....he needs shorts that don't look like he's homeless.  So....they're washed, ready to go....and what to my surprise does he put on Tuesday morning to head into work?  THE OLD RATTY ONES!  I asked why the heck wasn't he wearing his new shorts..."oh those are for good"....Like what....like you're going to wear those to church with your dressy tennis shoes along with your dressy tube sox for your Sunday best.  Something like that.  

This man was raised in an impeccable traditional 50's style home.  His mother is very Victoriana.  When watching movies with her she feels obligated to gasp everytime there's a swear word (which frankly in some movies that Jeff likes leaves her practically hyperventilating.  When I was pregnant, I was really sick....hospital i.v.'s a couple times a week sick.  God bless the woman she took our laundry, washed it & ironed EVERYTHING down to my flannel nightgowns.  Unbelievable,  as my method of ironing these days consists of shaking out vigorously, repeating as needed.   Of course, when we went over there for Father's Day Jeff decides to make me look really good by wearing mesh gym shorts and an old ratty t-shirt that's been buried  & stuffed into a wad at the bottom  of his t-shirt drawer, circa 1996 at least.  Needless to say, my daughter and I both bullied him into putting on his new lovely casual/dress t & at least some shorts that were not meant to be at the gym.  

I've now figured out where this "saving it for good" comes from.  It's from his mother!!!  She has dishes in her cupboard....lovely, beautiful dishes that are neatly packed away in proper containers and never see the light of day.  WHY??????????????????  His sister has a house full of Yankee Candles (which I love but can't afford).  She never burns them....why?  My brother-in-law sort of answered this question one day when we were there for dinner eating off the old plates, when he told of how when they were in elementary school,  all the other boys were blowing up their lunch sacks, blowing them up and popping them (like any self-respecting boy in elementary school does of course, along with of course the obligatory Chicquita banana sticker in the middle of one's forehead.)  Not these boys.  They had to fold up their little lunch sack, put it into their perfectly ironed long-sleeved, button up perma-press Sears shirts and bring them home to save them for the next day...and presumably the next.  So....a 100 count bag of  lunch sacks could conceivably last the whole of their school years,   graduating and heading onto college with a proper Scooby Doo lunch pail like the rest of the boys had!  They had indeed arrived.  Job well done.