Too Much Blue

Trees are budding out, lawns are greening up, mowers are being pulled out, allergies are popping up, and I’ve already got the first sunburn of the year.

Spring, at long last, has truly sprung.¹

Which brings the annual wardrobe reevaluation, pitching aside shirts that have survived a couple of summers and are worse for the wear, or that I’m just no longer fond of, and going through the fun process of replacing them.

When I look at the side of my closet where I hang my short-sleeved shirts, I realize something: I have too much blue. I’d say two-thirds of my shirts are some shade of blue. Then a significant chunk of that final third is some shade of gray.

I’m in a fashion rut, I suppose.

Part of that is explainable by a simple truth: just about every sports team I follow features blue as one of its primary colors.

KU: blue.
Royals: blue.
Colts: blue.
I don’t have a Pacers shirt currently, but odds are if I did, it would be blue rather than gold.
If I buy a shirt for the World Cup, it would either be for the US or Italy. Blue and blue, although an American shirt obviously gives me plenty of chances to get away from blue.

I try to mix things up, but I can’t help myself. Maybe it stems from wearing too many white t-shirts with graphics on them in high school and college, but I just don’t dig on white shirts that much. And, try as I might to get an alternate color shirt for one of my teams, I can’t help myself and always seem to walk away with another blue one.

When we were in Kansas City earlier this month, for example, I told myself all I would buy on my trip to the Rally House was a new Royals hat. Naturally I walked out with a new Royals hat and a blue KU shirt. I tried to find a red or white or even gray shirt that worked, but the ones that kept jumping out at me were blue.

Good grief.

So I spent hours over the weekend shopping for summer shirts that A) have nothing to do with sports and B) are not blue or dark gray. It was hard. Because each time I was drawn to the same old shades.

In the end I ordered a couple cool shirts, one red and the other green. Neither repping a team. It’s a start, I guess.