This is a Short Story that I wrote back in January and entered in a literary contest based on the theme of good luck articles of clothing. As there was no entry fee for the contest, the prize wasn’t that great, and I was totally indifferent when I found out I didn’t make the finalist list. I’ve broken this 24-page short story into two parts, and the second will be published on the 3/30/18 website posting day. Here’s the first section for your enjoyment. Orange you lucky!!                                                                                      Word Count: 2321

 

 

 

 

It’s All About That

Ragged Purple Shirt (Part I)

You ever had a piece of clothing that despite the fact it may, or not have given you some sort of good luck whenever you wore it, you still refused to put the damn thing on? First off, I strongly feel that those of you out there who buy into this whole superstition mumbo-jumbo are just that; delusional types who claim the moon landing was staged, possess documented evidence for their contention that 9/11 was an inside job, and U.F.O.s only land in large portions of the south. Basically, their minds have a sizable percentage of detritus. These people also get a lot of their news about the world from the F.atalistic O.ctegenarian X.enophobe News Network, but we won’t get into that at this particular time.

What I will say is this, the shirt I refuse to wear is so godawful ugly and unwearable that it’s a true miracle of nature I haven’t gotten rid of it already. The reason I haven’t done this has a lot to do with the fact that my roommate, who also happens to be my dear brother, thinks me wearing it is a good luck charm, and he won’t let me mistakenly (but planned out all along without his knowledge) place it in the trash bin. You should strongly feel that I’m a genuinely nice guy. I’ve had lots of chances to make the shirt disappear from my life, but because I haven’t, has a great deal to do with the fact that I’m mostly concerned about the welfare of humanity. Whenever I’m not strategizing about viable ways to conquer the world that is.

First, let me give you some backstory. Even if you don’t want me too, I’ll do it anyway since it doesn’t really matter what you think. The shirt in question was first exchanged between my father and his best friend for fifteen years. Myles Birnbaum and my father used to trade the shirt back and forth whenever one of their birthdays would roll around. Dad has been cheated for his entire life since his B-day happens to be on December 25^th. Sure enough, his buddy would always give him the same long sleeve purple eyesore year in and year out with the same note contained within; “This is such a wonderful article of clothing that I had to make a supreme sacrifice in parting with it. To celebrate the dual events of your birthday and Christmas happening on the same day, I’m giving this to you as a way to help you get through all those cold nights ahead of us.”

Then when April 15^th would roll around, Bradley Cavendish (Dad) would return the shirt with a similar note inside; “To celebrate two wonderful events – taxes-due and your birthday happening at the same moment in time, I’m giving you this shirt. Wear it in good faith, as I had a very difficult time separating myself from this.”

Ultimately, the shirt ended up in my hands when the two of them came up with a new treasure to exchange back and forth, an extensive collection of airline barf bags contained within a special satchel signed by Rodney Dangerfield’s garbage man.  Thankfully, none of the bags has been previously used, so that fact alone has aided in their gift transfer having taken place for over ten years now. That meant the shirt has been in my possession for that long too. Kind of scary to imagine I’ve been dealing with the shirt/clothing monstrosity for that length of time.

So why exactly does my brother and various others consider the shirt to be such a good luck charm? Maybe if we listen in on our latest conversation that might give you a clue. No promises though, since this might confuse you more than anything else.

The living room of our apartment; the shirt which henceforth shall be referred to as, “Barney’s Brother” or BB, is sitting in the corner with a pile of other clothing on top of it. Basically, so I don’t have to look at the damn thing:

“Don’t get up on my account,” said Christian Cavendish as he crossed the threshold. “It’s not like I’m the only one bringing in the money to pay the rent around here.”

My brother has perfected the art of over-dramatizing just about everything in his personal life. “What you talking about? I just landed that Internship yesterday, so I am contributing to the cause.”

“Yeah, but that only took a little over three months for you to pull off. During the interim, you’ve upped the cost of the monthly utility bill by taking four hour baths where you constantly added additional hot water to the tub, ate all of my snack food, and talked me into going to the movies where I of course had to pay for just about everything.”

“No sir, a few of those films you wanted to go to, and ended up asking me to accompany you. I never touched your carrot sticks by the way.”

“That’s because you’ve developed this uncanny ability to avoid any type of vegetable crossing your lips, except for ketchup which you consider a plant based form of sustenance.”

“Well maybe.”

“So, what’s the deal with all these clothes haphazardly piled up in the corner?”

Christian is also one step short of being a total anal retentive. “Oh that. I just washed them and dropped the pile of clothes on the floor when I quickly dashed in the apartment to answer the phone.”

“Vitally important to answer that call when it’s another telemarketer calling to find out if you do indeed believe in unicorns.”

“I got distracted and haven’t had a chance to pick them back up and carry the clothes into my room.” This is sort of true.

“Well what kept you from doing the job right after you got done with the call?”

“I decided to flip the Tele. on and watch the news.”

“Why? So you could catch all those commercials for FDA-approved “Overly Sore Butt” pharmaceuticals.”

Arguing with my brother is sort of like trying to navigate through a hurricane in your trusty Paper-Mache sail boat. “I like to keep abreast of current events.”

Christian walked over to the clothing pile and started leafing through it. “Sad excuse. How come you piled all these other clothes on top of your BB shirt?”

“I didn’t want to glance over at the heap and have to look at the damn thing.”

“But it’s good luck?”

“You can’t be serious?”

“Of course I am. Hard to argue with what happened when you put it on yesterday.”

“You think that just because I put the shirt on underneath my suit coat I got that Internship?”

“Why not? Makes sense to me.”

In the twenty-seven years I’ve known my brother, very little about him makes much sense to me. “Then why don’t you take it off my hands?”

“Because you’re the one who needs the good luck more than me. How do you explain that string of fortunate events which has transpired for you in the last month?”

“Which ones you talking about? I can honestly say I don’t recall any sort of good fortune.”

“What about when you got four of the six lotto. numbers right on the ticket you were given for your birthday.”

“So I won enough money to buy four more tickets, which I didn’t do by the way. All that does is keep these delusional dreamers coming back for more. Big deal.”

“Granted the lotto. people do have to keep selling tickets in order to stay in business, I suppose that’s why neither one of us has ever won the lottery, but it does have something to do with your run of good fortune. You had BB on at the time.”

“Total coincidence.”

Christian moved onto using another piece of fodder to support his argument. “How do you explain the fact that you lent BB to our neighbor and that very afternoon the landlord shows up to fix her wiring. Elmira had only been asking him for the past five months to look into it, then she puts BB on, and presto-chango he comes knocking on her door.”

“She told you that?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. In case you’re contemplating throwing the shirt out, don’t.”

“Why not?”

“We can’t do that since right after she gave the garment back to you, the dad whose kid broke our window with his errant baseball appears on our doorstep ready to replace the glass.”

“Another lucky coincidence.”

“Au contraire mon frère. I’m envisioning us putting BB on display in a special glass frame after you’ve worn it so many times it’s gotten thread-bare. We do the case so the good luck will keep coming of course.”

“That’s insane?” Then again, we’re living in America at the present moment, so Christian wanting to build a shrine with BB encased in it can’t be any more out-of-leftfield than all the federal government bewilderment. “You going to pay for the frame we’re going to put the shirt in?”

“Sure, why not. At this point I’m a bit concerned. You need to promise me you won’t secretly dispose of BB.”

Whatever. “Ok Christian, I promise not to discard it when you’re not looking.”

“I need a pledge from you.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die. I’d swear on a bible, but since both of us are atheists, that doesn’t really mean much. Intermingling blood doesn’t work either since the sight of the stuff makes me extremely queasy.”

“Squeamish? Me too. That means neither one of us will ever go to medical school.”

“You want to pinky swear on it with me instead?”

“Sounds good.”

With that, we locked pinky fingers. This was followed by Christian disappearing into his room to pull the tie off, change clothes, and slowly but surely enter back into the land of the casual. Meanwhile, I picked up the clothes and straighten things out. Not having much of a desire to go through another interrogation via my brother-the-neat-freak.

 

__________________

As I deposited the clothes into their drawers in an attempt to look and act organized, I took a long look at BB. Thought about all the things that had happened since I first acquired the garment.

We can only speculate as to why some people consider various items of clothing to be “good luck charms”? Maybe it has to do with the fact that mankind for the most part happens to be a superstitious breed. How do you explain the fact that a lot of people refuse to walk under ladders, and seriously consider spending the day in bed whenever a black cat crosses their path? What do they do when a mirror is broken in a fit of rage?

I could spend the next three hours just telling you about all the questionable practices some of my friends carry out while they’re rooting for a particular team. How about my buddy Jackson? He still refuses to admit that college football is a modern-day form of indentured servitude, with most of its participating athletes being unpaid circus performers.

The irony of the fact is that he happens to be black, but still feels some sort of bullshit allegiance to his alma mater, the University of Georgia. On game day Saturdays, Jackson always eats his breakfast from the same chipped cereal bowl that was given to him by Hershel Walker’s third cousin. Hershel Walker being the star running back, and Heisman trophy winner from back in the early 80s at Georgia. Then to add quirky behavior to quirky behavior, he drives his red Ford Victoria with black accents (the U of A colors) along the same route every time he attends a game (hasn’t missed a home contest in over fifteen years). This takes him forty miles out of his way to get to the stadium. He does this because it requires Jackson to drive by the house of Vince Dooley (the winningest Georgia coach of all time?). All to enhance the team’s fortunes.

Of course, Jackson always sits in the same section where he’s had season tickets since 1991, and orders treats from the same concessionaire who’s served him since the guy came on border that year. The team turned around its fortunes of 4-7 the previous season to 9-3, which Jackson strongly attributes to his influence. All in some sort of strange behavioral practices to enhance the team’s chances of succeeding.

Just as a final side note, Jackson contends that Georgia lost the national championship game to Alabama on 1/8/18 because he wasn’t in attendance, and additionally, had earlier made disparaging comments about Hawaiian food. The high cost of tickets and a previous commitment kept him from being able to attend. He did try to watch the championship on his smart phone, but kept getting interrupted by his wife who wanted him to participate more in that evening’s dinner party. Threatening to take the phone out of his hands and throw it into a nearby pond unless he took her words to heart and acted on them.

The disparaging comments came at a New Year’s Eve party the previous week where Jackson told a room full of other Georgia faithful that Spam (which plays a prominent role in Hawaiian cuisine) was the meat packing industries’ solution to an over-supply of pig’s feet at its slaughtering plants. This may or may not be true, but who among us is willing to investigate the matter? As far as the Bulldogs losing their match, Alabama overcame a 13-0 halftime deficit with the help of their freshman quarterback playing in his initial contest, Tua Tagovailoa. From of all places, those sun drenched tropical islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Was this a coincidence? As Christian always likes say, “I don’t think so.”