I know you’re not supposed to buy yourself things right before Christmas, but I wasn’t sure I’d get them, so I bought myself tube socks and t-shirts the other day. I’ve always hated white t-shirts. When I was required to wear them by maternal decree, I repeatedly told my mother that they gave me the swirlies.

The swirlies are experienced as an uncomfortable mismatch between layers of clothing, intensified by a discrepancy in size or the static cling of the dry winter months. You may have tucked in t-shirt that is being pulled in one direction by a confusing interaction with your belt, while the motion of your arms takes the upper layer of button down shirt in an entirely different direction. Think of it as small scale plate tectonics with homeostatic comfort lost in time like the quasi-mythical Pangaea. Only after many hours of wiggling randomly and tugging abstractly will comfort become possible.

Despite this tragically pandemic childhood trauma, I had recently considered, after a multi-year moratorium on all things tight and white, that I might cut down the dry cleaning bill through the cunning use of a fabric barrier. It may be that I am still too large for my larges, but I must confess that I have no languid largesse for the fabric of T and, still feeling swirly, would that all were return shipped to Germany, where this whole t-shirt thing started (incidentally).