Forty Days of Lent: Day Thirty

It has been a while since I've done laundry.  Not having to go to an office five days a week means I'm not concerned with keeping a fresh supply of clean button-down shirts and I have more t-shirts than is appropriate for a man my age.

Even though I don't have a job at the moment, I was still planning on dropping off my laundry.  The laundromat does a good job, it's only a few dollars more than doing it myself and it frees me up to do things like write this blog entry.  So the task becomes sorting and then sub-sorting my clothes.  The first sort consists of dividing the clothes into piles according to whether they're black, white and colored.  Obvious. The second sort weeds out clothes that I don't really want people at the laundromat to see.  For example, my Charles Manson t-shirt.   It was a going away present from my roommate Tony and his girlfriend Melissa when I left Philadelphia.  This was in 1991, which gives you an idea of how long I've held on to some clothes.  I never wear the Charles Manson t-shirt outside of the apartment anymore.  There was a time when I would wear it outside but only beneath a sweater.  But then I began to worry that some circumstance would dictate I take the sweater off, like unexpectedly warm weather or perhaps the need to help an injured person.  They need a tourniquet and only my sweater will do.  I expect a shocked silence from the other people when I take off my sweater to reveal Manson's face beneath.

Similarly, I stopped wearing my "Christianity Is Stupid" t-shirt outside the apartment, whether it was covered or not.   With that shirt, I pictured being the victim of an accident and the shirt's message being discovered by paramedics in an ambulance.  Perhaps one of them would be fairly devout and thus less inclined to save a heretic...or a smart ass.  If nothing else, a theology debate would probably ensue as they tended to my wounds, a scene not too different from when your dentist asks you questions while you have a mouth full of tools, suction devices, and fingers.

I eventually donated my "Christianity Is Stupid" t-shirt, along with some other clothes, to the Salvation Army.  I wonder what they made of it and if it ever was put out for sale.