On matching

I am a father and most of the post-worthy events in my life revolve around a 2-foot tall guy who craps his drawers. But I try hard to self-edit posts so as not to turn The Hose into a parenting blog. However, a recent event involving the boy challenged one of the long-held pillars of my personal vanity, which is a topic all to familiar to Hose readers. And so...

For most of my adult life, I have stood steadfastly against people wearing matching outfits. It's the primary reason I never joined the armed forces. In high school I opted out of matchy-matchy team sports in favor of swimming, where participants are free to wear whichever goggles they like. The height of my disdain came in the summer of 1994. My almost-a-girlfriend and I cruised down to Dallas for a day at Six Flags Over Texas. There were all sorts of idiots dressed alike - church groups, soccer teams, even couples! The worst of this motley lot was a couple wearing matching XXXXL t-shirts that said, on the front, "I don't see nothing wrong..." followed by "with a little bump 'n grind!" on the back. Class acts all the way.

As Hose readers can imagine, this aversion to matching created a daily struggle in the xTian-Sparks household in the late 1990's. "We can't both wear our Regis-inspired light-green dress shirt with light-green tie to Flute tonight."

Then I had a kid. My feelings started to waiver. First of all, he has much cooler clothes than I do. One shirt with a picture of a helicopter on it was so cool I wanted one for myself. He eventually outgrew it, but for Fathers' Day we got an awesome present - matching replacement helicopter shirts (pictured).

I was pretty pumped (finally, my own helicopter shirt), but The Cha was absolutely elated. He is barely old enough to tell day from night, but he recognized right away that we were wearing the same thing. He spent the whole day pointing at his shirt, then pointing at mine. It made his day, which made my day, and probably made Catjjy's day, too.

So a revision to my rule on matching: wearing matching clothes is a surprisingly effective bonding tool for fathers and (very young) sons, but should only be pursued when the outfit in question is cool enough for the father to wear even if the son is not around. Obviously, a helicopter shirt fits that bill.

I can already imagine the controversy this post is going to ignite.