Mighty Mouse

I am an overly-sentimental person. It's a curse...the makings of a hoarder.

Yikes, hope not.

But really, as I go through the heap of clothes that sits on my bedroom floor, a symptom of a schedule that has just now begun to cool down, I find myself confronted by my own sentimentality.

Perhaps this is obvious; then again, maybe not. It is peculiar to me that the things to which I find myself most sentimentally attached are not pieces of priceless jewelry or family heirlooms, but random items of no consequence to anyone else; t-shirts in particular. Just moments ago, I was sorting through some old clothes, when I found a raggedy Mighty Mouse t-shirt that I've probably had since kindergarten. I can't bear to part with it.

It's way too big for me. I assume it's XXL, but the tag has lost any identifying marks and is now just a plain black tab of fabric. There are rust stains on the collar and Mighty Mouse's bright yellow suit is all faded. The white has lost it's glow and the plastic-y stuff that makes up Mighty Mouse's teeth, ears, and the whites of his eyes, is crackled all over.

I love it so.

We used to live in a house without any sort of neighborhood pool. On summer days, we would visit my grandparents and spend hours swimming in their community pool. My grandparents lived right next door to the public pool, so it was a very short walk there and back. In the evening, we would return to Nana and Pop's for showers and comfy clothes. We once came without anything to change into and so returned home in Nana's too-big t-shirts...dresses for us. She gave me the Mighty Mouse tee and I've had it ever since.

In second grade, my grandparents sold their house to my parents and moved three hours away. Second grade was a horrible year for me, but, until recently, I had only ever blamed it on my family moving; I didn't realize that my relationship with my grandparents had changed so dramatically. The days of evening pool runs were over.

It's as if some chapter of my early childhood, long past, is preserved in this silly tee. It's ridiculous, I know, but Mighty Mouse isn't going anywhere for a long, long time.