380. Free T-shirt

In the course of one year, Andrea went through a slew of bad things: job loss, parental health issues, divorce, you name it, she experienced it. So what made her feel okay? FREE STUFF!

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

 Andrea: My name is Andrea, and it’s going to be okay.  I wonder genuinely what lesson I was supposed to be learning in 2023. To say I got the bricks beat out of me was an understatement. In the span of a calendar year, I spent 10 months in a messy divorce. As it turns out, what was supposed to be civil had the word war following.

Got in a car accident on what would have been my anniversary that totaled my car, had my diabetic mom literally die twice and spend a week and a half on a vent in the ICU only to later be diagnosed with dementia and need 24 7 care while I’m the sole POA,  Had my father develop severe enough a fib that he needed to be shocked back into rhythm, leading to months of a slow recovery.

Got caught in the second round of layoffs from my full time job a week before my divorce finalized. And nearly lost my house in a contentious and petty battle, thanks to the aforementioned divorce and job loss and refinance.  And among all of that, the various annoyances that come with day to day existence didn’t cease.

The world doesn’t stop when it feels like it should, I fear.  Any one of those events can knock a person sideways. To have them essentially one right after the other is a mental and emotional onslaught unlike anything I’ve dealt with in the past 33 years that I have been alive.  But the nice thing about my support network is that they are more than capable of making miracles happen when called upon.

Within a week of being laid off, I had two part time jobs, one of which was apparently the one I needed to have from the jump, bartending.  Bartending is a paradoxically a healing endeavor. Among the pre date and nightcap crowds that you serve are the folks who come to see you specifically and what you provide as their bartender.

Maybe that’s the best black Manhattan they’ve ever had. Maybe it’s a custom creation based on their tastes that changes week to week. Or maybe it’s because a couple of drinks in your ear are far cheaper than therapy.  Over the past several months, I’ve been privy to many a personal story with woes shared, triumphs celebrated, and ennui challenged.

What’s nice about all these interactions day in and day out is that they show you the value of the littlest thing, and how much something simple can change your trajectory.  One such day was recently, on a Tuesday afternoon during a heat wave, which was beset with pop up storms that put a damper on an event the local clothing company next to my bar was having.

Tuesdays are normally slow, so we were holding a happy hour special to attempt to bring folks in and have them check out the bar.  It had been a rough day for me. A surprise nasty gram from my ex’s lawyer had left me reeling and frustrated with the many things out of my control, and before we’d open to the public, I’d been crying to myself while setting up the bar.

But you know how it is in the service industry, you have to smile through the tears to make money, or you run to the walk in to scream if you’re lucky enough to have one, which I wasn’t.  The weight of the world was sitting on my shoulders. at this point a familiar and uncomfortable burden that had occasionally gotten an extra 10 pounds added for funsies, and being on was the absolute last thing I wanted to do.

But the bounce of rain didn’t do a lot to help matters for that event next door. While it had a small turnout, the numbers they’d hoped to hit weren’t there. Once it had concluded, the resident social media maven of the brand popped in to say hello, post up and do some work with their friends in attendance, and give me, and some others in the bar, a free t shirt.

Y’all. What is it about a free t shirt that makes people so silly? I’m sure you’ve heard it before. People will do anything for a free shirt. Think about all the sporting events you’ve been to where they’re doing giveaways with a cannon, watching people battle it out in the stands. All the booths set up during large events with t shirts you can win as a prize that support whatever the booth is.

Special promotions for events with custom logos that are only for the first X amount of people to get there. They almost never fit you. It’s almost always a marketing ploy, and they’re doomed to reside in the bottom of your drawer within a month unless it’s consigned to their rag, workout, or donation piles.

But also, think about the people you’ll see in the world who don’t have the luxury of a shirt, or one so threadbare that it hardly qualifies as clothing. The people for whom a free shirt means a little extra protection from the sun, the wind, or the bugs.  Think about how you perceive someone walking around without a shirt in a place where shirts should be worn, and what that means for their circumstances.

I realized then that I am so grateful for the little bit of dignity a shirt on your back provides. And as someone who has struggled with body image issues for a good majority of my life, I find a t shirt is often my first sort of comfort and confidence, so much so that I’m very rarely without even my shirt.

That someone thought to come next door and give me that little shred of dignity when I was fighting constant feelings of worthlessness, when I had been stripped over and over again, and was left the most exposed and raw I’d ever been, was huge in that moment. Here, they were saying, is something to hide your wounds and your insecurities for another day, and give you one more layer against the metaphorical elements.

If you want to be a cynic about it, you could say that they were just trying to get rid of overstock. You could note that it probably cost them little to produce and ergo nothing to give away, since they’d planned on giving it away regardless. You could call it free advertising and that it wasn’t that big of a deal.

And sure, all of that may be true.  But to me, on that day, a free, extra large t shirt that proudly proclaimed Cleveland is the reason, and that my short frame was literally swimming in, was just the thing I needed most.