Clothes Make the Man, by my little brother Bob

I'm busy with work today so I asked my 14-year-old brother Bob, who was recently the subject of an impromptu makeover conducted by yours truly, if he would write up a guest post about the experience. The short essay he submitted makes it clear that he is well on his way to becoming a better writer than me, which stirs up feelings of intense pride and blossoming insecurity, but I'll deal with that later in therapy. For now, here's Bob's post:

Imagine if you will, a 14-year-old boy in a grease-stained Portland State University t-shirt from 1998, old black jeans with red paint drips on them, and holes from where he stabbed them with a knife.

That was me at one time, although I cannot remember those days with clarity anymore. They seem so far away: days of poor hygiene, grubby clothes, low self esteem. Lately things have changed. I am happy, my teeth are white, I bathe regularly, and I am proud to say I have been completely de-wormed!

During a recent outing with Winona, we were waiting for her boyfriend and decided to wander around in a store for several hours. As usual with Winona, things started drifting into the clothing section. That day I was wearing my aptly named "badger attack pants" and a poorly fitting Carhartt shirt I borrowed from my dad. We had a make-shift intervention right then and there, and Winona convinced me to go shopping for some new clothes. I really didn’t know what style I liked, so I just stood around saying I hated everything she picked out for me, mostly T-shirts and button ups.

Eventually she persuaded me to try on a button up. I slid the shirt over my greasy dark green work shirt and decided it felt good. That was the easy part. Now I had to swallow my pride and tell her she was right and I loved it. We tried on more shirts until we had a nice stockpile built up. Winona’s eyes must have wandered to the suspicious “bloody residue” on my pant leg because before I knew it we were off to pant world. I decided I liked Levi’s so we rifled through those before Winona picked some out for me. Let me just say, she is a masterful pants picker, erm… picker-outerer, and all the pants fit. I only discarded the pair that had a button fly.

Let's move ahead to today, where I sit before you hunched over a keyboard with blood-shot eyes and delicious creative juices spraying into a cavity in my brain where something important should be. I am in a crisp white tagless T-shirt with a button up shirt on over that, with some amazing jeans that I can wear for extended periods without intense stinging pain in my waist.

One of my new outfits

I wore this out today and let me just say I felt better, know I looked better, and my heart didn’t feel quite as clogged with chunks of turkey. I was a lot happier with the way I looked, and I accomplished everything today that I would have with my old wardrobe on: I ripped apart an old couch, I played with my cats, I played with a crowbar and ran through a store with a huge pack of coat hangers looking for my lost dad (and I found him!). Thank you Nona!