Four s'mores and seven beers ago we formed this campsite to form a more perfect desert. That is the tag line I used when describing this cool t-shirt I had which I affectionaly called my "camping shirt".
I wore the shirt even when I wasn't camping and I even had a few people tell me they wanted one. But, alas, it is no longer for sale and I no longer have mine - it is ruined. In fact, I ruined it last night and so, today, I'm in a little shirt morning.
This is how it went down. Yesterday, after Lisa's long day, I was pretty hungry but I had to go pick up the kids and dinner. On my way to the girls I decided to swing into Wendy's for a late (3:30pm) lunch. I was going to get my old stand by, the spicy chicken sandwich, but decided at the last minute to go with a quarter pounder with cheese. It turns out that was a bad decision.
As I drove over to the babysitters house I attempted to eat the burger while it was still halfwrapped in butcher paper. Wendy's burgers are a lot more greasy that I knew and their butcher paper is neither water proof nor guaranteed to be well folded on the bottom of the burger. As I took a bite out of the sandwhich a steady stream of grease poured out of the bottom of the paper and left a solid trail down my shirt and onto the pocket of my jeans. I don't care about the jeans but I was pretty upset with myself for coating my shirt in burger juice. It was almost enough to turn me into a vegetarian - well, for a week maybe.
I still had some hope though - Lisa recently started using this magic potion called carbona which is designed to get grease stains out like they were nothing. After getting the girls I headed home, took off the shirt, and got out the carbona. It claims it can remove a grease stain in three easy steps.
- cover stain with carbona and put shirt on a clean white cloth.
- tap on the stain until the stain "falls" out of the cloth and lands on the cloth. (move the cloth and repeat as necessary).
- Rinse in warm water and then wash.
I did all of that; though I guess I didn't tap and shift the cloth enough because, last night, when I removed the shirt from the dryer, the long greasy stain was still there. It looked exactly as it did a moment after the burger pissed all over me. Even though it is a camping shirt I don't really like to wear stained clothes - call me an elitist - but I just can't do it. (Yeah, I know, first world problem; this whole post is one - really, I get it.)
Thus, I threw the shirt away and figured I'd order a new one today. But, alas, it isn't for sale anywhere. Woot, where I bought it originally, no longer sells it. They do some strange "reckoning" thing and the lincoln camping shirt has been "reckoned" which in woot speak means discontinued. Threadless, another online shirt vendor, has some kind of election to determine if a shirt will ever be for sale and I guess Four S'mores just never made the cut.
The guy who came up with the design doesn't seem to sell the shirt either. In fact he just calls it a collectible now. I'm kind of bummed.
I know, this shirt really shouldn't mean anything to me - it's just a goofy play on words with a drawing of Ol' Abe roasting marshmallows. But, in actuality, it meant a little bit more to me becuase it reminded me of a shirt from my childhood. Hold on cause this is pretty sappy.
When I was little, I don't know how old, maybe five, I had a long sleeve blue shirt (with yellow sleeves) that had Huey, Duey, and Louie on it. They were roasting weiners or marshamaollows while wearing their coonskin hats. It was my favorite shirt. At some point my mom had a school photo taken of me in that shirt. It is one of the only photos of my childhood I always remember. It hung on my Aunt's wall well into my later teens. It was the photo I pasted to a christmas ornament and gave to my parents as a gift (which I have now). I loved that photo not because I was in it but because that shirt was in it. It is my favorite shirt from my childhood and the Four S'mores shirt just brought it back to me in adult form. Four S'more's wasn't my favorite shirt now but I did like it and I'm a little bummed I had to trash it.
Next time I'm getting spicy chicken; that stuff never drips.