end of summer link roundup 2023
How is it possible summer is nearly over!? When I was a teenager this was my favorite part of the entire summer. While others were milking the dog days of August, greeting each other with ideas of dread for their homeroom assignments, I was completely fine to face the reality of the approaching academic year. Because in the coming days, a wad of cash would be handed to me with a simple benediction:
*angels sing* For school clothes… *angels sing*
We're talking those years where your mom no longer felt the need to tag along and it was just you, your best friend, and her sister who was old enough to drive her mom's GMC Jimmy, and ya'll h a u l e d a s s to the big city as soon as that allowance came through. (Listening to the burnt cd you made the night before labeled, “shopping mix”, cuz you were too jazzed to sleep, of course.) Hell. Yes.
Our big city was Minneapolis. I grew up school clothes shopping at the freaking Mall of America. How weird is that? I'm quite literally a pro with experience like that under my belt. I'll bet the same warm euphoria would still hit me today if I were to stroll into that west rotunda, fake-ass thunder clapping from the Rain Forest Cafe, staring straight into the souls of all the weary dads searching their cargo pockets for pennies to flip into the fountain they all lounged around. Ya'll smell that Cinnabon?!
YEAH—it’s go time.
I was always the last man standing too. Everyone else retiring to the food court while I dared to hit the 4th floor, firing from those final energy reserves, scouring the t-shirt racks of Ragstock. I scored a 1995 Billy Ray Cyrus, Redneck Heaven Tour t-shirt there going into my freshman year of college. If you know me, you know this shirt. Come to think of it, I wore it for my birthday dinner this year under a vintage slip dress. See ya'll, I play for keeps. When it comes to shopping I commit. And I got a forever wardrobe to prove it.
ANYWAY, ON TO THE GOOD PART.
