That Time I Should Have Died Part Three: In Which I Almost Get My Little Kid Nipples Ripped Off (Alternative Title: Jessica Quits Fashion Design)

As I have mentioned before, my sister is my best friend.  My entire life has been spent following her lead, learning from her experiences and trusting her counsel wholeheartedly.  Like a young samurai before a sensei, I submitted to her demands and obeyed her instructions with the blind loyalty of a Golden Retriever.  Jessica knew what she was doing, and I always assumed that she would never steer me wrong or wander into territories out of her control. 

Whether she was aware of my unwavering obedience or not is unclear to me, but if it was, I'm not sure if Jessica was emboldened by the sense of importance I had bestowed upon her or just plain drunk on it.  All I know is that the combination of Jessica's creativity and my naivety to perform her every whim proved to be almost deadly one fateful night in which we were both bored.

In all of us is some desire to create, to make something out of nothing so that it exists in the world and we can look at it and say we made it.  Art, clothing, careers, whatever: I don't think that I am alone in feeling a swell of satisfaction looking at a finished product made by my hands.  I'm not sure if every girl goes through a fashion designing phase, but I remember Jessica and I both toyed with it.  To this day, Jessica is highly skilled at combining prints and textures with amazing accessories and shoes culminating into a spectacular outfit or ensemble; I, on the other hand, routinely grab whatever shirt doesn't gather too much under my armpits and pull it over tattered Bermuda shorts and call it good.  And I think that the world owes me a thank you when I blow-dry my hair.  The point is, that one restless night in middle school, Jessica's creative juices were apparently flowing, and I was the perfect idiot model to test her prototype.

I can only imagine that when Jessica decided she wanted to "make a shirt," she must have realized her inability to sew and the lack of raw fabric in which to fashion a tunic.  However, her eyes fell upon what she conceived to be the next best thing to spun silk or cotton: a roll of masking tape.  Tim Gunn would be proud of Jessica's ingenuity and determination to "make it work."  Using me as a mannequin, Jessica was going to make the world's best masking tape shirt.

We immediately set to work, but in hindsight, our approach was dubiously flawed.  I now understand that to apply a masking tape shirt, we should have began with me (the dummy mannequin) wearing an actual shirt on my person.  However, our unbridled passion to begin work on Jessica's masterpiece could not be broken to think out all the specifics.  At Jessica's suggestion, I stripped off my T-shirt (or most likely my Jimmy'Z sweatshirt that I lived in) and laid on the ground, ready for Jessica to apply strip after strip of masking tape to my childish skin.

Work progressed like this for several minutes.  Jessica applied strips of masking tape to my little naked torso, and everything was going fine for a while.  However, as she worked laboriously and I shifted in anticipation of seeing the finished product, I noticed that the strips of masking tape were pinching in areas like my armpits and around my belly.  Moving my joints and wiggling around was really starting to make the tape fold painfully, and my skin was starting to feel irritated under the material..

I told Jessica that I wanted to stop, that the game wasn't fun anymore and was starting to hurt.  I think Jessica had grown tired of laboring over tape application only to find half of my torso still unfinished.  She agreed that we could stop, and grabbed a strip of tape at the end, pulling it from my skin with no warning or thought.

I will try my best to explain to you the searing pain of having masking tape ripped off of your soft, unblemished baby skin.  And seared it did.  As the tape ripped off of my skin, a barbaric child's wail rose within my chest and out of my stupid mouth full of teeth too big for my head because I got my adult set of teeth early and they were crowding.  I screamed unexpectedly into my sister's face, and the bewilderment on both of our faces was something of legend.  As I babbled incoherently in an attempt to tell her that experience hurt way too much to continue, Jessica decided internally that the best course of action would be to rip tape off of my naked baby chest as fast as possible.  She quickly learned this wouldn't work when my flailing arms smacked her against the head.

After several minutes of calming my tears, Jessica informed me that there was no way I could live the rest of my life with 10 or 15 strips of masking tape stuck to my chest, as I was planning to do.  She tried different tactics of slowly pulling the tape loose from my skin or her genius idea of ripping when I wasn't expecting it.  All attempts were fruitless, as the masking tape had formed one of the strongest forces on earth with the tiny hairs growing all over my body (I am a mammal, after all).  During our struggles to remove the tape, we noticed my skin growing very red and even broken skin where tape removed a few superficial layers of dermis.

In all of the struggle, my mother heard my screams and perhaps the hissing sound of adhesive releasing from a surface, because the next thing I saw was her terrified face peering around the bedroom door.  Her expression went from worry to utter confusion, and I imagine the sight of one daughter ripping tape off of the red, angry naked chest of the other must have needed some explanation.  Soon enough Mom had joined the mission of pulling tape off of me.  I know now that it would have helped to have me soak in a tub of water to help peel the tape off, but on that horrible day, nobody was thinking of "painless" solutions.  We were all bamboozled enough to think that we should just rip and rip until it's done. 

The worst of the ordeal was pulling strips of tape from my poor little kid nipples; nobody should experience such torment.  Truthfully, I had a lot of arm hair as a child, and so that portion of tape removal was the worst, but that pain has been forgotten and the pain and irritation surrounding my sad little chee chees is what lingers in my memory.  Had my family been intentionally torturing me for information using such tactics, I would have admitted to anything: I'll talk, I swear!  Please, just spare my chee chees! 

An eternity later, the awful task was finished, my chest was red and raw and extremely tender, and Jessica lost all interest in alternative fashion using items my step-dad forgot to put in his tool box.  Perhaps I exaggerate when I include this story into my "That Time I Almost Died" series, but I defy anyone to rip masking tape off of their naked chest and tell me their life didn't flash before their eyes.  We have all come to find the humor in this story; Jessica even used it in her maid of honor's speech at my wedding (more to come on that fine note, sweet babies).  It may even be a part of the indestructible bond that Jessica and I share as sisters.  It is perhaps the best memory I have that I would never relive for any amount of money on this green earth.  I really have no way to end this story with a moral or comment on life as a whole, just please, please, please don't put masking tape on a naked torso and then attempt to rip it off.

Adam Sandler Doesn't Know Anything About Loving Sweatshirts

I was never a fashionable kid.  From the time I became responsible for dressing myself until almost today, I have rarely, if ever, looked remotely put together.  Childhood pictures of me reveal wrinkled pants and shirts that most likely came from the floor, completely uncoordinated with one another.  A devil-may-care attitude toward clothes coupled with the fact that I grew up during the baby doll tee craze with the body of a white string bean could only result in my outfits looking like a laughable, ill-fitting embarrassment. 

One item of clothing that I did particularly adore, however, was my light aqua-colored sweatshirt that I wore literally every day for almost two years.  The sweatshirt was emblazoned with a car in the middle, surrounded above and below with the same name in different colors with a heavy 80's inspiration: Jimmy'Z (I don't know the correct pronunciation, but my family and I have always just said "Jimmy Z"). 

I had no idea if this was a clothing brand name or an auto mechanic company that advertised via bitchin' sweatshirts, but none of that mattered.  What matters is that I loved this sweatshirt with what I now realize is an irrational obsession, pawing after it every morning like a man underwater, desperately clawing for the surface, for my very life.  The pants and shirts that I "chose" every morning were arbitrary and inconsequential; they were expendable as napkins and I probably hated them all. I do remember that I only had one pair of pants that did not rest above my ankles, exposing the lace frills at the ends of my socks; these pants I tolerated.  But as soon as I begrudgingly robed myself in my garbage clothes, I would dutifully pull my Jimmy'Z sweatshirt over my head and let its over-sized fabric drape over my shoulders like a twin-sized sheet.  The sleeves pooled around my hands like those of a wizard, and my legs jutted out from the bottom of the sweatshirt like knobby twigs from under a circus tent. 

I donned my sweatshirt with the reverence of a crown upon a king's brow.  And with that, I was ready for school.  Every day.  From 3rd grade until maybe 5th or 6th, I don't remember.  When you wear the same sweatshirt every day, you can imagine how the days bleed together in an aqua blur.

As often as I wore my Jimmy'Z sweatshirt, I am surprised at how few pictures exist of me in it.  I'm sure there are more somewhere at my parents' house, but I was hard-pressed to find one this evening.  I pondered this to a friend earlier, who said, "Maybe your mom didn't take pictures of you in that sweatshirt because she didn't want people to think you wore it every day."  Good point.  I was able to dig up one picture in my possession, though, which more than adequately conveys my persistence in wearing the sweatshirt while also depicting my unadulterated enthusiasm for the sweatshirt itself.

This sweatshirt makes me impervious to drowning and death in general

What I really love about this photo is the fact that I am wearing it over a life vest in a boat on what is obviously a hot and sunny day.  Not only am I refusing to remove this sweatshirt, but as my mom instructs my sister and me to smile for the camera, I grab the sweatshirt and put it proudly on display with the facial expression of...what?  An evil genius in the midst of maniacal laughter?  A fan standing front row at an Aerosmith concert?  An 8-year-old just kicking life in the twosie the only way she knows how?  My exuberance knows no bounds in this picture, all thanks to Jimmy'Z.

I caught an understandable amount of guff for my decision to live in a sweatshirt nonstop.  I remember my mom holding the door for my sister and I as we dashed to the school bus.  Upon seeing me yet again in my Jimmy'Z sweatshirt, my mom asked exasperatedly, "Tiffany, why are you wearing that sweatshirt again?  It's not cold outside."  My only thought to her question, which I verbalized, was, "So?"

Another time, my sister approached me in the hall and told me briefly, "Tiffany, that high school boy will give us a ride home from school, but you have to take off that stupid sweatshirt."  I popped my Bubblicious and replied coolly, "Well, smell you later."  NOTE: This part of the story is not true, but I thought it might be mildly entertaining.

I grew up an avid Adam Sandler fan in both the film and musical sense.  My friends and I quoted Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore lines well into our 20's.  I borrowed my dad's Sandler CD's and barricaded myself in my bedroom, laughing until I was out of breath at Lunch Lady Land, the Thanksgiving Song, and What the Hell Happened to Me?, among many others.  As an adult, I strongly recommend you buy his album What's Your Name?, and you may wholeheartedly thank me later.  During one of my countless nights listening to Adam Sandler's music and trying to figure out what he meant during what I now know to be his very filthy songs, I noted a little gem by the name of "Red Hooded Sweatshirt," a song he wrote as an ode to his red hoodie about their many adventures together.  From using his hoodie as a pillow on a nighttime bus ride to feeling guilt over removing it for a shirts and skins basketball game, Adam paid homage to his hoodie with his smooth vocals and charming wit.  I remember laughing along with the jokes in the song, but I honestly thought Adam Sandler didn't know shit about committing yourself to a sweatshirt.

My point is, that sweatshirt gave me a metaphorical pair of brass ones.  I was never a child that clung to a security blanket in the common outlets: I didn't need a blanket, stuffed animal, or pacifier the way other kids did; those things never did anything for me.  But I guess I found an odd sense of control and confidence with that sweatshirt, two qualities that eluded me as I began junior high and high school.  Somewhere along the way, I remember someone joking about "that sweatshirt Tiffany wouldn't take off," and for the first time, I didn't brush it off like before.  I wondered if maybe wearing the same sweatshirt every day actually was something worthy of disapproval.  I don't mean to put too much emphasis on people poking fun at Tiffany & The Sweatshirt, because it really is laughable, but I guess I was at that age when you start to look around and compare yourself to what the rest of the world is doing.  And the rest of the world was not wearing a giant-sized sweatshirt every single day.

I don't remember exactly when I stopped wearing the sweatshirt, but I remember folding it up and putting it in my dresser, reserving it for cold weather only.  And then it sat in my dresser for a long time as I bought more knitted sweaters with trendier patterns that actually fit me, and I think I finally decided to donate it to charity or some rubbish as I entered high school.  I really don't remember what happened to the sweatshirt, but I have tried to look for it in my old clothes during trips back home and have not been able to find it.  Getting rid of it has been my life's greatest mistake, more so than the time me, my sister, and some of our friends snuck into Mexico while our mom slept at the beach house we were visiting.  I really messed up good when I got rid of something that was such a constant part of my life for a long time; besides, I think it would fit me just right these days and it's a shame I don't have it anymore.

In writing this story, I actually found out that Jimmy'Z is a clothing brand which, from the looks of it, mostly deals in surfer/skater/beach apparel.  I like to remember it as a walking advertisement for some bad ass auto body shop, but that's irrelevant.  Scouring the Internet as I have done today, I can not find the same design of my sweatshirt anywhere, but the Jimmy'Z website offers an email address, to which I intend to compose a letter asking if they could help me find the one I loved so much.  I truly hope that I can be reunited with my sweatshirt one day, my Precious, my Rosebud; I see it as a modern tale of love lost and then found again, a heart bubbling over with adoration, stringed instrumental music, and aqua cotton.

Seriously, guys, it was a really bitchin' sweatshirt.