Ode to the Hand-me-down(and down, and down, and down)s. By Jemina.

Most of you non-firstborns out there are probably familiar with the almighty hand-me-down. For the 1% of our readers who led charmed lives and have no idea what I’m talking about, a hand-me-down (“HMD”), is an article of clothing, often a shirt, pair of pants, or a dress one inherits from an older sibling (hopefully one of the same sex, but this is not always the case). A HMD’s chief purpose is to help parents economically justify having more than one child. For the Boyds, HMDs were commonplace; even James the eldest was not exempt. James inherited his clothes from another church family, so not even he escaped the cold, slightly worn grasp of used goods.

As young children we thought nothing of the trash bags overflowing with “new” clothes that showed up on our porch once or twice a year. Giddy at the prospect of acquiring new (read: old) clothes, we tried on things until we found the items we liked (and some that Syl demanded we keep), put the castoffs back in the trashbags, and carried them to the Salvation Army where some other poor family could purchase our reject HMDs for 10 cents apiece. Given the frequency with which growth spurts hit in our house, it didn't take long for HMDs to make their way down the family line to me.

Case in point: the Summer of 1984 brought with it an exciting new addition to James' wardrobe—a practically new (translation: less than one year had elapsed since the original date of purchase) Mickey Mouse t-shirt with a navy blue ringed collar and sleeves! This wardrobe coup was the result of a hasty decision by a fellow church family to rid their home of all things cartoon and rodent-like after hearing a sermon about satanic subliminal messages in Disney cartoons. After enduring many seasons of HMDs that were a touch out of fashion, James hit the HMD jackpot. It was as if Walt Disney himself shined his devilish light upon us and decided to bless us with a cool piece of clothing. I say “us” because we all knew that, if we played our cards right, we’d someday get to wear the Mickey shirt, too! Josh and Joy stared longingly at James every time he donned the Mickey shirt, anxiously awaiting the day the hallowed torch would be passed on to them.

Unfortunately for James, his time with Mickey was short lived; 1985 brought an additional 3 inches to his frame, rendering the golden tee a midriff on his already lanky, scrawny frame. Thus, Josh was blessed with Mickey's presence and Joy, sensing her time was nigh, began formulating a plan to make the t-shirt hers. She could hardly believe her luck when Josh tried on the shirt and realized the “husky” jeans he wore also applied to his torso. Poor Mickey looked bloated and misshapen stretched over Josh's belly, and Josh resigned himself to the fact that he would not get to live the dream. Ever the sympathetic sibling, Joy quickly capitalized on Josh’s grief, snatched the shirt from Josh, and ran to her room to see which culottes (re: gaucho pants in unflattering textures and colors) best matched with it. Evidently Joy concluded that Mickey matched with every pair of culottes in her closet, as he and she made a joint appearance in practically all of our home videos for the next few years.

When the time came for me to inherit the now slightly less coveted Tee of Mickey, the ringed collar and sleeves had faded from navy blue to a dull purple and were stretched out and virtually elastic-less. The shirt itself had grown threadbare due to hundreds of washings and was pockmarked with holes under the sleeves and seams. Mickey's wrinkled and sagging face bore the tell-tale signs of a mouse that’d been ridden hard and put up wet during his years with the Boyd family, and his now cracked gray eyes begged us to put him down, Old Yeller-style. Though I was hell bent on claiming and wearing my piece of history, this dream was abruptly shattered when I, a fellow recipient of the “husky” gene, attempted to squeeze into the t-shirt and Mickey’s face summarily ripped in two. Only then was Mickey quietly laid to rest in our trash can following a touching eulogy by James and Joy, the only true beneficiaries of Mickey’s magic.

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