Red-dy, Aim, Mock!

On Sunday night, I had enough forethought despite all of the meteorological chaos outside to bag up my dry cleaning to take into the office on Monday morning. I was proud of myself, the fact that I was able to tear myself away from watching the Olympics to grab a large white trash bag and count dress shirts as they entered said bag. When employing this variety of pre-planning, the shirt bag ends up by the door so that when I walk out of it to go to work, all I have to do is swoop down, grab, and go.

Oops.

For those who weren’t YABbites back in September of 2004, I wrote a post that elaborated on my dry cleaning philosophies. That post is linked here. But for those who are enrolled in remedial mouse-clicking, I’ll summarize. I dry clean my dress shirts ALL AT ONCE, leaving two shirts out of the batch. One shirt is worn the day I take in the dry cleaning. The other is worn the day I pick up the dry cleaning. Every other shirt I own is part of the dry cleaning. Such a system is highly effective, efficient, and has very little margin for error.

Like I said, oops.

Having forgotten to grab the bag on Monday, I knew from the moment I remembered during yesterday’s commute that I would have to find a way to make up the void in the shirt lineup. I find my situation very similar to that of the 2005-2006 Philadelphia Flyers. This year, the Orange and Black have been ravaged with injuries, so much to the point that on any given recent night, 8 first-year players have been inserted into the lineup. Hockey is not like baseball, where if an injury occurs you’ve got a backup on the bench ready to go. In hockey, everyone on the team plays in every game (thanks to the world of rolling four lines. If someone goes down, the coach needs to call the minors for a replacement.

Looks like I’m calling the minors.

I have some casual button-down shirts that can pass the office dress code, but I try my best not to have to call on them. They are often much brighter colors, which 1) I don’t want to have to look at as I type on my keyboard, and 2) makes you instantly 73 times more visible to co-workers. Being visible is not a good thing in an office. Being visible to people above you means they see you more readily when they’re trying to delegate. Being visible to people below you make you a choice target when they have a question. It’s a no-win situation.

Nonetheless, I called the minors and put on a nice checkered red Eddie Bauer shirt this morning that I got for Christmas. It’s a great shirt, I love the color, and look forward to wearing on many an occasion – outside the office, that is. But I figured it’s not a big deal, and I’d be getting back my starting lineup tomorrow when the dry cleaning is picked up. Easy, easy. It was almost too mundane.

We don’t write about mundane here at YAB.

No more than three minutes after sitting down at my desk, a co-worker walks by, stops, and sees my shirt.

“Awww, how cute! You wore red on Valentine’s Day!”

And just like that, I’m the guy who dresses up for holidays. I’d type more, but I have to sew my leprechaun costume for next month.