Dress your children in orange and white

VolMom called last night to tell me that she had picked up a whole bunch of baby boy clothes for Cletus at a consignment shop. So that’s right – used clothing for a brand new baby.

“Nothing but the second best for my baby,” I told the Vol-in-Law.
“Third or fourth best, really, is fine – so long as it’s not dangerous,” he replied.

Actually, used is great. And VolMom knows very well that I’ll enjoy items more if I know she got a deal on them. I’ll buy used clothes for myself, used cars, second-hand jewelry. If it still works, why not? Call it my personal take on environmentalism. To re-use is better than to re-cycle.

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Baby boy clothes have bears and puppies and trucks and tools on them. Baby girl clothes have kittens and fairies and flowers on them.

“Not that it really matters, but did you find any boy clothes with kittens on them?” I asked VolMom. “I know that kittens are mostly found on little girl clothes, but you know I’m more of a cat than a dog person.”
“No kittens,” she said rifling through her (many) newly purchased onesies and rompers. “But here’s one with a lion on it. And a tiger… And another tiger…” PAUSE “Oh no, that tiger looks a little too much like an Auburn Tiger.”

Ahh, the complexities of SEC rivalry and baby fashion.

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VolBro has emailed to congratulate me on having a baby with the correct chromosome sequence, but has warned me that Baby Cletus needs “proper attire”.

That is – I need to dress my child in orange and white.

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I promised the Vol-in-Law I wouldn’t buy any more baby clothes – especially since, as yet, we have no baby to dress. I haven’t gone crazy on the shopping. (But I think VolMom has). I n fact, I haven’t bought anything more than what I posted about.

Well, until today. (Maybe he won’t read this.)

I had a little look at Marks and Spencers (a sorta department store – found in every UK town center) – and found a pack of newborn body suits – in yes, orange and white.

Well, what would you have done?

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My old pal St Caffeine is already worried about what a half-Brit, half-Vol baby will be like.

See, much as I love her, the VA is one of those obnoxious UT fans. This little tyke (Cletus for now) will be all decked out in his bright orange sweatshirt underneath an appropriately staid British blazer and he’ll be saying things like, “UT’s going to flather some serious bum against Bama this week. Quite so!” Sorry, I’m not an expert on Brit slang, I had to make it up. Still, I’m thinking I’m not too far off base. Durr, UT trash talking of any sort is bad enough, I hate to imagine it coming from a precocious British lad. Still, I bet it’ll be awfully cute! Regardless, congrats VA, ViL, and Cletus!

Of course it will be cute. Who doesn’t love a bit of toddler Tennessee trash talk? Or perhaps a sweetly mangled chorus of Rocky Top. I’m not sure about the sweatshirt beneath the tweed though. But you’re right – gentlemen’s wear has an important place in proud English sporting tradition – i.e. football hooliganism. From wikipedia:

In the 1960s, when fighting at football was commonplace in the United Kingdom, British police would be on the lookout for fans wearing skinhead fashions or cheap work wear. Once this became apparent, hardcore hooligans started to wear the expensive clothing favoured by the well-to-do fans, to avoid police attention. This led to the development of the casual subculture. Since then, classic gentle-men’s clothing lines — such as Burberry, Ben Sherman, Aquascutum and Paul and Shark — have been appropriated by hooligans as their uniform. Now the wearing of such clothing at domestic football matches is more likely to attract, than repel police attention. The height of casual culture was the mid 1980s, when hooligans following Liverpool F.C. through Europe would raid boutiques across the mainland continent to steal the latest fashions.

Yes, perhaps we can bring together the finest traditions of British and Tennessee sportsmanship. The orneriness, the drunkeness, the loudness, the unwaranted bragging, the sullenness at loss, the property damage… Really, I’ll leave it to you to determine which feature to attribute to which proud culture.

What not to wear

Is that Nick Saban guy an idiot? Can’t be if he’s just signed a coaching contract worth a jillion with Alabama. But just look…just look what he turned up in to his first “official” Crimson Tide sporting event. A purple shirt (his old LSU school colors) to an Alabama basketball game. My old pal and a bona fide Alabama alumnus says:

From all I’ve heard, Nick Saban is one sharp cookie. How could he not realize a purple(ish) shirt would not be the best thing to wear to his first Bama sporting event? Even casual fans know, you wear Crimson to Crimson Tide sporting events.

His fashion gaffe isn’t helped by the fact that Alabama was playing LSU that night. Apparently, many an Alabama fan is in a kerfuffle over the Saban sartorial choice – and was it really purple or was it magenta, and when did Saban know it was purple, and so on…

Well, I’ve got a few things to say about it myself…

1. I can kinda see what he’s up to – he’s wearing one of those kinda iridescent shirts with one color (purple) in the warp and another color (crimson) in the weft. See the shirt is two things at once… he’s building a bridge between the two proud academic institutions of the two fine states of Alabama and Louisiana [cough…splutter…evil chuckle].
2. But as my brother says “You can only have ONE team in the NCAA,” and the very idea of having two in one conference is ridiculous.
3. Besides that, when you take the King’s shilling, you wear his colors.
4. Man – that shirt so does not go with the rest of his tacky-ass sky blue leisure suit outfit. I just thank my lucky stars we gotta a man-with-a-fashion-plan in Coach Bruce Pearl.

Dahlia rivalry

This weekend in London was gray and damp and miserable. On Saturday it drizzled, occasionally raining. I caught cabin fever – so we went down to the garden centre in Morden, South London. It adjoins on to a National Trust property – and we thought we might be able to go for a walk if the weather cleared. It did not.

I didn’t buy any bulbs last fall and I’m not planning any major additions to the garden for the summer. The garden is pretty full. I have a problem. I overplant.

But the garden centre workers were setting up a dahlia display. Dahlias. I’ve never grown them. I’ve always imagined them to be fussy and difficult, slug prone and requiring pinching back and precise mixes of fertilizer – not to mention more sun and more growing space than I can probably provide.

But I saw this awesome orange and white dahlia. Big and blowsy. Tennessee orange at the base and white at the tips. I had to have it.

I asked the Vol-in-Law if he wanted to get a pack of dahlias. You never know what his response will be to something like that. He’ll either be completely dismissive or he’ll really contemplate and mull over his decision. He mulled. He looked at all the different colors and finally he asked me:

Would you mind if I got the Alabama dahlia?

The Alabama dahlia. Sure enough the dahlia he was looking at was crimson and white and in just the same pattern as the Tennessee dahlia. Now I had to ponder. I’ve seen that one in real life – it’s really beautiful. So we got it. At the check out, I held up the two packets of dahlias and made them play fight – “grrr…arrrgh” while we were waiting for the cashier.

“Wouldn’t it be funny,” the Vol-in-Law said “if they really did fight and the UT dahlia was a small and puny and the Alabama dahlia was all big and beautiful?”

“No, that would not be funny at all,” I said.

The Alabama dahlia at our hotel in Bayeux France