Before school started this year, I bought my oldest son a bunch of t-shirts I thought he’d like. There were 12 in all:

– The Microphones

– David Bowie’s mugshot from when he was arrested with Iggy Pop for possessing a 1/2 pound of marijuana

– 2 Neutral Milk Hotel shirts

– Swans

– a shirt depicting the Breaking Bad cast as SouthPark characters

– Queen

– a drawing of Walter White as Heisenberg

– 2 Pink Floyd shirts

– Godspeed you! Black Emperor

– and a pencil drawing of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke’s face

I probably should’ve asked him to pick them out himself, because when I excitedly showed each one to him, I could tell there were some he liked more than others.

He’s too sweet to admit that he didn’t like all of them, even when I insisted I wouldn’t be insulted if he wanted to return any.

The one in particular I could tell he wasn’t fond of was the Thom Yorke shirt (pronounced “Tom York”, but we affectionately refer to him as Thom Yorkey).

I actually thought this was the coolest one because Thom Yorkey is a pretty good looking guy, but what makes his face so interesting is a heavily drooping eyelid.

A lot of people are self-conscious of a lazy eye and go out of their way to not call attention to it. I even had surgery to correct my own eyelid when I noticed it was drooping with old age.

But Thom Yorke is so awesome, that he’s always proudly rocked his.

So my son wore the shirt to school one day. Because I’m obsessive about laundry and never let a day go by without doing it, the Thom Yorkey shirt was washed and folded back in his drawer the next day.

Some days, my son will wake up early to really do it up and put on makeup and a skirt and brush his hair.

Some days he’ll roll out of bed and I can’t be sure that he’s put on clean underwear.

He likes to change it up.

On the latter-type days, he’ll pull whichever shirt is on top of the pile in his drawer.

So even with all those shirts, he unintentionally wore the Thom Yorkey shirt in the same week with only one day in between.

I said to him, “I didn’t think you really liked that shirt.”

It turns out I was kind of right – he explained to me that even Radiohead fans make fun of Thom Yorke, so the shirt is funny.

Then he told me that his friends hate the shirt and get annoyed when he wears it. Most kids would be upset by this and never wear it again.

Not my son.

Now he purposely wears the Thom Yorke shirt whenever it’s clean.

For a second I thought about burying it under a few other shirts so people wouldn’t think I was a mean mom who only bought him one shirt, but then I laughed and put it right back on top.

It’s even got a big green stain on the shoulder now because my hot mess of a child somehow got gum on it. He doesn’t care. I don’t care. We both don’t care. And I love him so ♥️