Wash 'n' Wear

I lost a good friend a couple weeks ago. Not to worry, because I know he's in a better place.
If the bottom of a dumpster behind the University of Colorado practice field can be considered a better place.
"He" is, or was, a T-shirt. Not just any T-shirt. He was my Friday shirt. When I came home from work after a long week, I would pull that bad boy on and we would go for a run. It was the way I knew that I was home and the next forty-eight hours were mine to contemplate the next work week. It was my bookmark and my solace. He will be missed.
My good friend "Friday" and I have covered plenty of ground since the mid nineteen seventies. That was when my older brother and I retrieved him from a dumpster behind the Balch Fieldhouse after a Golden Buffalo football game. Dumpster diving was a pretty regular pastime for us back in those days. Our usual trophies were partially used rolls of athletic tape. My brother once salvaged a broken helmet that sat on a shelf over his dresser for a decade or more. My father used to joke that one day we would bring back a used jockstrap. Which we did, especially for him, sanitarily wrapped in a tennis ball can for his convenience. And protection.
Friday was rescued on an autumn afternoon when I was still in junior high. Compared to a lot of the garbage we dragged home, this seemed like it was in pretty good shape: a black shirt with "Colorado" stenciled across the front in silver letters. Not a jersey. That would have been the jackpot, but dumpster divers can't be choosers. There was some discussion about who would end up with our new acquisition, but I would imagine that it was a bit of whining on my part that allowed it to find its way, after a few washings, into my drawer.
Where it stayed. A souvenir of a forgotten time.
Until I moved out to California, and it came with me. It became a workout shirt. It didn't start out as my Friday shirt, it was a conscious choice for me to pick that one out of half a dozen. Over the past quarter century, that shirt has been through the wringer with me more times than I can count. The wear and tear was visible after a decade or two of regular wear and tear until it became more reminiscent of something from Stevie Nicks' closet than a T-shirt.
Finally, on the occasion of a return to Boulder, I said goodbye to Friday. This garment that had become a shirt in name only, which had served me so well for all those miles and miles. I went back to whence it came and returned it, much the worse for wear. It will no longer be the thing that my wife looks at and says, "Are you going out in that?"
Nope.
Friday is gone.
And it's okay.