Tag Archives: shopping

The mystery unfolds …

I spotted this t-shirt in the window of a store in Edgartown about 20 years ago. I liked the cartoon depictions of MV landmarks and also the cute characters enjoying themselves. It seemed like a perfect shirt… I wanted it badly but alas it was around 8pm on an early May evening and the store was closed up tight. I obsessed on this shirt all evening… I could see it in my minds eye… the Flying Horses, the cliffs at Gay Head, Martha’s Vineyard spelled out in semaphore flags, the airport, the lighthouses, the ferries, the gingerbread houses… just about everything was there.

The next morning we got to the store just as it was opening. But wait, the t-shirt was not in the window… where was it ? We dashed inside and I explained to the ladies there that I had seen a certain t-shirt in the window less then 12 hours before and now it wasn’t there. They looked perplexed ! Neither of them knew what t-shirt I was talking about, they’d never seen a t-shirt like that before and would certainly have remembered such a different sort of shirt. I wondered if I’d entered the Twilight Zone ! They reiterated that it couldn’t have possibly have been in their window… they closed the store up the night before and had been the only ones working in the store all day ! I know my dreams are vivid but I didn’t think I was that good.

Oh well, as long as we were there we decided to browse. With a sigh I headed off to half-heartily look around. Cute stuff but… hold on a second, something caught my eye. It wasn’t even with the other t-shirts, it was mingled in with, I don’t remember what, all I knew was that I had found IT. I grabbed my prize and ran to show it to the ladies. They were stunned, they had never seen that t-shirt before !!!! So, I ask you, was it in the window the night before… did someone move it out of the window and onto a rack without their knowledge… is this story made up and… does the t-shirt exist for certain !!!  Stay tuned to find out !!!!