Apollo High School

The package comes during November, and despite the yuletide wrapping and festive ribbonry, I’m not very excited. I already know what it contains. Inside the box rests the ugliest sweater my grandmother could find at the JC Penney in Akron, Ohio.
Yes, every year my grandmother sends me an awful Christmas sweater. They aren’t awful Christmas sweaters in the traditional sense. They are not covered with generic, overly cutesy snowmen, elves, or reindeer. They are just plain, awful sweaters that always arrive around Christmas time. It wouldn’t be a big deal if she just sent me one bad sweater, but another arrives every year, like clockwork. Another detestable sweater in a long line of detestable sweaters. Now to elaborate on the quality of these sweaters. No sweater should have seven colors, zigs, zags, swoops, nubbins, and a poof ball. I love my Me-Maw, but dagnabbit, these suckers are bad, you dig?

So, every year this sweater waits under our tree to be opened and then placed on top of the previous year’s model in a musty, dusty drawer that is seldom opened. Every year I do this. I really have no idea what to do with them. I can’t wear them in public. They’re way too hot and itchy to wear around the house. I guess they could make pretty good rags. I could wipe something up with them I’m sure, but I would just feel wrong doing that. After all, my loving grandmother deemed these things as worthy of her money. Furthermore, I don’t think they would be much help as a donation. I don’t think some guy who’s seriously down on his luck will have his spirits raised by a sweater that jingles.

Part of this vicious cycle is that one, inevitable day when I decide that somebody has to wear the things. This person is, of course, me. I distinctly remember in eighth grade someone asked me if I was going to a funeral. Nowadays, people are more apt to laugh, or shout “A COSBY SWEATER, A COSBY SWEATER,” a la Jack Black in High Fidelity. Indeed these sweaters are up to Mr. Cosby’s standards. Maybe I should just send them to him.