letter to my hoodie

i love my sweaters. all of them. you should know that.
not because they have special all have meanings to them or anything. almost all of them don't. i try not to do that with things like sweaters, because i don't wanna be out in the cold not wearing a sweater only because it reminds me of something i don't wanna be reminded of.
but i love them because wearing a sweater is so comforting, and i have had so many of them to be comforted by.

but one sweater did have a little special meaning to me, because i bought it with my own money and then made it shine with my own skillz. my grey quiksilver zip up hoodie.

i bought it randomly from gilroy. wore it out a little bit. then while wearing it at a maganda tshirt screening event, decided to screen my screenname onto it. it made me feel so cool. so cool that i decided to see how many more things i could screen onto it. with each extra screen, my coolness would grow.

i would end up screening only two more things onto it because cutting out the stencils for screening was a beezy. two characters from peanuts; linus van pelt, who i always loved because he shared my could've been name, and a disproportionately sized woodstock, who i thought was just cool.

anyways, the zipper handle came off, and then the metal that used to hold the handle became sharp enough to take out a chunk of skin from my finger. and then some of the threads holding the lining of the zipper came loose and would catch and make me spend 15 minutes trying to get them free so i could zip it up properly. and then today they got caught again and i was so frustrated that i just took both flaps of the jacket and ripped them apart, breaking the zipper and effectively ending my hoodie's long life. i guess i could still wear it, but it's not really functional anymore unless i can zip it up, shit just gets too cold.

i can't imagine why this would be interesting to anybody. i spent the car ride from oakland to pacifica contemplating on whether or not i would post about my sweater, ultimately deciding for it only because it at least deserved some sort of obituary somewhere.

so goodbye dear old friend. like a champ you went with pretty much all my shirts and all my shoes and even all my hats. i'll be sure to donate you somewhere and hopefully you'll end up somewhere inspiring some up-and-coming freshness. maybe i'll see you on tv somewhere, who knows? maybe they'll make you into sustainable insulation and you'll continue warming people for generations. wherever you end up, hopefully, you'll do the rest of the world the good you did for me.