Pin Drop — Fitted Tee

You find the badges in a little tin. Some of them still make immediate sense. Others appear to have been selected by a much more confident person with a very specific interest in a joke you can no longer remember. You turn one over, as though the back might contain the explanation.

There is a whole period of your life in this small amount of metal. The place you used to go after work. The person who gave you the orange one because they said it looked like you, a description you accepted without requiring further evidence. The badge you wore for months before learning that it meant something rather different to the person standing next to you. You keep that one near the top.

You used to put them all on the same bag. They knocked together when you walked, announcing a number of opinions before you had reached the room. Now you lay them out on the table in front of the black tee you have just put on. You consider choosing one. You consider choosing the one whose joke has escaped you, purely to see whether anybody else is willing to admit remembering it.

By the time you leave, you have picked the orange one. On the way out you catch its reflection and remember who gave it to you. You send them a picture. Their reply arrives before you reach the corner: you still have that? You do. You are slightly surprised by how much else you still have with it.

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