Writing Prompt: The neck of the shirt felt as if it was choking him.

I just realized why I have been so off this week. It is the last week before Daylight savings begins. This is the week every year where getting up in the increasing dark drags me down and I feel very off kilter. It happens every year, but with everything going on I didn’t realize it was this week. I know it doesn’t change that I was late with every post this week but I am happy to realize why. Anyway, soon this week will wind down and the clock will change. Until then, we continue on. Ready for the morning prompt? Fabulous. Let’s go.

I like this one. It doesn’t grab me the way yesterdays did, but i like it.

Thursday, November 3^rd: The neck of the shirt felt as if it was choking him.

The neck of the shirt felt like it was choking him.  It was too tight, too starched, too hot.  He tried to take shallow breaths and sit as perfectly still as he could.  As the minister droned on at the front of the church, he tried to remember the last time he had even worn a shirt with a collar, much less a tie.

‘It had to be the Sunday before I left,’ he decided. 

He couldn’t remember it exactly, but until he left home he went to church with his parent’s every Sunday from the time he could remember and probably a little before his memory kicked in.  Always there was the same black pants with matching jacket, white buttoned down shirt, tucked in and a solid color tie.  His parents weren’t about to let him get away with any kind of fancifully patterned ties any more than they’d let him get away with anything but a white shirt.  They picked up a selection and allowed him to choose between various blues and greens. 

‘Although they made sure I knew the pastel green was only appropriate for Easter Service,’ ‘ he recalled. 

Then he left. 

On the occasions where he did attend church outside in the great wide world, he made sure it was a church that would accept his polo shirt instead of requiring the white oxford and solid color tie.  He didn’t mind church and he had no problem with god, but he was not going to sit in that shirt and tie combo any more.

That was the promise he made to himself.  Since then he structured his life in a way that made certain he could avoid it. His career, his personal life; none of it required the suit.  It didn’t sound like much of a goal when he said it out loud, which is why he never voiced it out loud.  And if he was honest, it was more about what the tie and shirt represented more than anything else.

Control.

Control other people had over how he was presented.

‘But here I am,’ he thought.  He had managed a full twenty years without the Sunday uniform.  Twenty years of making sure that any visit he returned was done in such a way as to not include a Sunday.  Although as his life was far enough away that trips home had to be scheduled things, they were less and less frequent.

Still when he received the call that his father was in the hospital, the schedule was hasitily rearranged, the flight booked and home he went.  Now he was staying in his old bedroom.  As he didn’t have any suits or ties, when Sunday rolled around his mother took the ones he left behind to the dry cleaners so they would be fresh for Sunday. 

And here he was. 

In the exact same suit he left behind.

Tomorrow his father would be released from the hospital.  If all went well, this would be the only time he wore this suit.  As the Sermon wound to a close he wondered if he could take it with him and somehow manage to burn it when no one was looking.