Is this You: Changing clothes

With winter falling off of our radar, it seems appropriate to look deep into that abyss of darkness and monster hidey holes, aka our closets, to find the next season’s apparel. Oh, swell!

I have noticed throughout the winter there are hearty souls out there who seem to wear shorts all year long. I see guys scuffing along in stores with polyester knee length athletic type short on. Even a few women aren’t left out of this phenomenon of wearing shorts in winter, usually not the short short of mid-summer, but shorts all the same. I see them as I pass wearing my mukluks, sweatshirt and down-filled knee length coat! Burr.

Recently while shopping I noticed the pants on the racks have had their legs cut off and the tops are now without arms. Yep, summer clothes have arrived at your local shops. The lighting must also get changed because it seemed brighter in the stores. Maybe it’s because the tops are not dark, sunray-catching colors. Maybe it’s because the shorts have replaced the racks of fleece and sweat pants of those same dark, dreary but necessary winter colors. I say necessary because if you fall down in winter into a giant pile of white snow, you want to be wearing dark colors so you’ll look like a fly spec and be able to be found easily and pried up from the bright white frozen wonderland you landed in. Put those winter wonderland memories aside — it’s spring!

I start saying my pre-summer mantra about this time each year, “I will fit into my last year’s shorts. I will fit into my last year’s shorts.” Then I put down the extra cookie and try to find my exercise bike hiding under the mountain of clothes that have somehow accumulated on top of it, so I can heft myself on the seat and ride into our all too short “short season.” That’s where I’m now. Peddling my ba-donk-a-donk backside toward the summer sun.

Is it just at my house or at yours too advertising gurus know when we all sit down to gobble potatoes and gravy? It seems just as I aim a fork full of baked macaroni and cheese toward my mouth another commercial for a wonder fat busting pill is coming over the airways, plotting a course toward my second course. Hold on a second, I have to wipe the crumbs from my cupcake off my fingers ...

Superficiality aside I don’t think the getting into short shape has as much to do with the look as much as I know it has to do with the physical readiness of summer. We ask a lot — I mean a lot — more of our summer bodies than we do of our hibernating winter bodies. Yes, there was snow removal and wood packing and ice skating and skiing in the past six months. But summer activities of the yard work, the garden, the camping, the hiking, and the outside stuff we have been craving? There’s the true reason for getting this ole bod into short shape. Well, that and I don’t want to be all sweaty and sticky wearing those aforementioned sweatpants when it’s 80 degrees and I’m standing in line at a store waiting to buy yet another bag of marshmallows to roast around the campfire!

As we travel headlong into the season, there’s yet another looming monster in the closet waiting for us all. What is in there past the shorts and sleeveless tops and sandals (which also call for us to keep those toenails in shipshape condition)? Yes, you guessed it. The swimsuits! Do you just hum the theme from “The Twilight Zone” and feel a shiver, too? Maybe we still have a few weeks until we have to face that!

Eventually I’ll step a little farther into my closet, but I will not go far enough in to get to the swim suit section — you know, way in the back, under the pile Earth shoes, 1990s leggings and leotards. Nope, I’m stopping at the shorts section. If I want to get wet I’ll just run through the sprinkler — no swimsuit required. Well, that didn’t come out exactly right, did it?

Trina lives in Eureka, Nevada. Her book ITY BITS can be found on Kindle. Share with her at itybytrina@yahoo.com.