Taste Optional

I lived in warm climates all my life except for one place while I was a teenager. I grew up in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops and never gave much thought to what I wore. I am not color-blind or lacking decent taste I just always cared more about function than form. That may be how I wound up with several hideous but comfortable sweaters when we moved to a place with actual seasons. Out of all of them the ugliest one is still fresh in my mind. Its shape was actually flattering, the problem however was the picture. It was a black background and against it taking up about half of the front was the profile of a human face in red. It actually gets even better, floating in front of the face is an apple in the same red, I still grin at remembering it. My older sister won best dressed in high school and when she came to visit from college she was mortified by my attire. Secretly her disgust rather pleased me, it wasn’t why I wore them but it sure made it more fun. Eventually it was time to go again and it was back to a warm climate. After moving I didn’t give the now unneeded sweaters any thought. It wasn’t until years later when packing for a trip to somewhere cold I realized I couldn’t find my beloved, hideous clothes. To be fair my mother hated my clothes too, she however had the sense not to mention it, she would just cringe at the sight of them. To this day neither one will admit it but I am pretty sure one, or both of them conspired to purge my wardrobe behind my back. I like to think they (or she?) donated my things instead of tossing them in the trash. That somewhere out there someone is torturing their family with a red and black 80′s reject sweater.