The Drivers License Shirt

He couldn’t remember why he liked it in the first place, much less why he was in a panic to find it. The shirt was threadbare and speckled with holes of various dimensions but once it glistened like orange and green striped polyester gold. It had originally come into his possession through the fruits of a fit he threw at the Hickory Flat Bargain Store, the summer before his eighth grade year. Anyone witnessing that vocal and tearful event would attest to the fact that his mother had no choice but to buy the shirt and ease his teenage suffering. In 1979, the shirt had clung tight to his skinny torso like a sock on the wall of a dryer. Seventy-five pounds and a quarter of a century later, he had little hope of squeezing back into his old friend without looking ridiculous...but then again, that was the point.

This was not the first time that Paul had lost the shirt. In fact, out of the twenty-six years that it had been in his possession, it had only made a handful of cameo appearances: his first day of high school, his first date, and every Drivers License photo he ever had taken. Originally a stunt to entertain his friends, the tradition of wearing what became known as the “Drivers License Shirt” (or DLS), evolved into something unexpected: a visual record of time flying. Every five years when his license expired, he squeezed back into that glorious rag, combed his hair down straight like Moe Howard and went to stand in line at the DMV.

“Where is that freaking shirt?” he said in the oppressive heat and humidity of the attic. It always turned up in the loneliest places. Once he had found it wedged in a crevice between the arm and seat of his frat boy quality sofa. Potato chip crumbs and ghosts of farts fell out into the air and almost choked him when he dislodged it. Another time, the shirt turned up in a moldy cardboard box full of ancient history. Inside were the odds and ends of his life: an Elvis mirror, a pair of 3D glasses, assorted Christmas and Birthday cards, immaculate unopened bills, and a zoo of unloved stuffed animals. He wished that the shirt had found a less retrospective place to hide.
So far, he had collected four Drivers License photos and kept them pinned in chronological order on a dry and crumbling cork board behind his computer. This year’s photo would be the fifth. With each successive laminated portrait his face widened, his eyes tired, and his smile looked less believable. It was like looking at time lapse photography of a man being poisoned. The consequences of five years revealed in a moment. It would have been depressing if the pictures had not been so god damned funny.

Grumpy and discouraged by his failure to locate the shirt in the attic, Paul gingerly coached his feet down the ladder. Although he knew a steel bar was bolted across the bottom of each rung, he could not help but envision himself painfully splintering through each one and crashing to the floor. He imagined his spirit hovering over his broken body as the medics arrived on the scene. “No more Cheetos for you big boy” one of them would say and then they both would start laughing. Paul’s right leg reached downward and found solid ground. “Looks like I’ll be having at least one more bag, you fuckers” he thought defiantly and let the folded ladder spring back into the ceiling. He paused to scan his brain for memories.

Once again he turned to his bedroom dresser; the contents of every drawer strewn about the room in random hurricane order. “Think” he said and tried to direct more juice to the part of his brain that remembered things. “I came home from the DMV, threw my change in the candy dish, pulled the shirt up over my head and threw it in the…GOD DAMN IT…I am starting to freak out people!” He grabbed one of the tacky brass handles on the front of the dresser and yanked the whole drawer out of its socket. “SHIT!” he screamed slowly as if the word was a mile long…and then there was silence. In one corner of the space previously occupied by the drawer, pressed flat against the back of the dresser, was his holy grail. “Oh, Drivers License shirt, I LOVE YOU!” Paul said mimicking Elmo from Sesame Street and then burst into laughter.

The shirt was in worse condition than he remembered both visually and odiferously. “All the better.” he thought and began inserting himself into the fragile garment with all the care of an archeologist trying to unroll a Dead Sea scroll. “Just one more time, old buddy” Paul thought as he began slipping the neck of the shirt down over his talk show host sized head. The polyester smashed his nose flat and clipped his ears as it stretched across his face. He felt like he was being born. “Almost there…” he said as he applied the final bit of pressure and then “pop”, he was wearing it.

Paul looked at himself in the narrow full length mirror that hung on the back of his bedroom door. The shirt stopped short of his hairy belly and a hole fell fortuitously around his left nipple. A pimple loomed red and ripe on the side of his nose and his off-white teeth smiled as if they were made of ivory. It felt good to be sixteen again.