Do you have a favorite shirt? Or tie? Or pair of shoes? Well, true love for a favored piece of clothing has its price, and I paid it last night.

It's odd how attached people get to inanimate objects; not just the ones that become anthropomorphic in nature, like stuffed animals or sock-monkeys, but even those every day items, too.

For me, it's my Edinburgh Military Tattoo shirt, bought in 1996 during my honeymoon after we'd attended the famous "Edinburgh Military Tattoo." It's--no he's been a perennial favorite ever since that cool August night, when I first spied him hanging at the souvenir stand (that shirt breathes like no other--even a 100 day doesn't faze him) but last night, he was wounded in battle. Critically wounded.

Okay, let me start by saying that I'm not a big fan of eating and drinking all kinds of crap at movies. I'd like to throttle the first idiot who decided that munching on a bag of popcorn--which cannot be done in silence--or slurping a glass of pop was a good idea in a crowded theater when everyone wants to watch and listen to what's happening on screen, and not in someone's mouth down the aisle. It's distracting and annoying. I'm sure I'm not alone on this.

So last night my wife and I see Thank you For Smoking. Pretty good film--not great, but pretty good--but my wife was afraid that she was going to cough a lot (scratchy, dry throat that night), so she went to the lobby and bought an Icee. That's one of those deep red, great-tasting frozen-ice drinks with a consistency that defies molecular chemistry or description.

"Do you want a sip?" she asked me.
Since the film hadn't started, and since Icee's are to me like heroin is to a junkie, I nod in agreement.
"Just a little one."
I take the Icee cup in hand. Remember that an Icee has a huge mound of Icee-drink on top of the cup, contained only by a rounded, clear plastic attachment.
I sip--damn, that's good, I think. An Icee's consistency cannot be described by mere words: foamy, slushy, syrupy--I dunno'. Maybe the Eskimos have a word for that type of frozen-ness, but I don't.
I go to hand the cup back to my wife when--the plastic lid pops off. Sploosh!
I have neglected one important point: my Military Tattoo shirt is white. Whiter than white. White like Ultra-Bright toothpaste white.
Deep red Icee virtually explodes all over my shirt, like I've been hit with a mortar round.
"I've been hit!"
Okay, so I didn't have the wit to say exactly that; instead, I used a word that contains the letters "G" and "D" and sounds an awful like "Goddammit!"
Alright, it was Goddammit.

My wife runs and grabs some napkins while I squeegee red Icee off my shirt with the side of my hand. The movie begins, I wipe myself off as best I can, but for the next 95 minutes am wearing a red and white shirt that is sticky as molasses. My favorite now red and white shirt as sticky as molasses.

We are out of town visting my wife's parents, so we get back to their house while my mother in law, a natural-born chemist if ever I saw one, applies various concoctions to the shirt.

With suspense it is washed and...
and...
it's white again!

I don't how what Icees are made of, but I would bet that some Icee-hired lawyer advised them, as a means of reducing cleaner-bill lawsuits, to make that substance self-cleaning, because I have never seen a large, completely permeated red stain like was on my favorite white polo shirt come out like that!

Either that, or my mother in law is a genius.

And from now on, my wife can cough her head off in a theater for all I care. After all, I gotta' shirt to protect.