The T-Shirt Chronicles

Like many people I know, I have accumulated an abundance of T-shirts throughout my life.  As a child, I was inundated with MIT and Caltech T-shirts when my brothers were attending college and did their Christmas shopping at the campus bookstore.  When I myself went to college, I ended up with a pile of T-shirts from all sorts of activities.   It was a rare student organization that didn't have its own T-shirt.  Each dorm produced at least one a year and most significant events were marked with a commemorative shirt.  These T-shirts and the ubiquitous college sweatshirt were a mainstay in all student wardrobes.  Upon graduating and finding myself in the computer industry where at least one T-shirt exists for every chip, software program, peripheral device, code-named project, and vaporware technology, I continued to add to my growing stack of cotton T's.  Some of them are from projects I've actually worked on.

I realized during a bout of spring cleaning that my dresser drawers were full of neatly folded shirts that I rarely wear anymore.  Instead of fully rotating through my T-shirt collection, I have always worn a core group of about 5, which has evolved through the years as I get new ones and old ones start unraveling at the neck or otherwise disintegrating.  So I went through all of them, trying to keep an objective point of view, and divided them into piles.  One pile was for definite discards, T-shirts that I haven't worn in the past year.  But I felt bad about just turning them into car rags or ditching them at the Goodwill.  Most of these shirts have tremendous sentimental value to me.  I'm sure that sounds silly to anyone who has the good sense to not attach themselves emotionally to inanimate objects.  But for me, each shirt tells a story.  And that is the purpose of this site.  It is not really a tribute to my poor worn out shirts.  It is more of a collection of anecdotes inspired by an item of clothing that may seem lowly and utilitarian, but which can carry as much of a weighty remembrance to me as the smell of baking bread.

I hope you enjoy this collection of recollections.  My hope is that it will inspire some of you to take your own remembrances and make them shareable in a way that brings you enjoyment.

Navigation Notes: The t-shirt icons with arrows take you through the site. You can view the table of contents by clicking on the t-shirt icon at the top right of each page. You can return to this page by clicking the t-shirt icon at the top left. At the bottom of each page are links to web pages that are relevant to the page you are on. Enjoy!