Ethan has a terrible habit. He puts a hole in one article of clothing a day. One. Article. A. Day. It is usually a poor sock that meets it’s demise and I believe it is most often on the bus ride home from school. He systematically pulls the elastic threads from the sock until is hangs in a droopy puddle around his ankle. The ‘bad’ sock ends up in the trash, while the ‘good’ sock is ushered into the laundry to meet up with yesterday’s victim. It then awaits it’s turn to fall prey to Ethan’s anxiety. Dennis and I have made the commitment to pick up a package of socks each and every time either of us are in Walmart or Target. It’s true, we have resorted to Automatic Sock Buying.

Ethan also unravels the hems of shirts or just works a hole into a portion of the bottom near the hem. These are last week’s casualties. Sometimes he removes the tags in shirts – like this…

He may wear a shirt with a tag 20 times when he decides that he doesn’t like the tag after all. We have also resorted to specialized tactics when buying shirts. When I find a sale (on tagless shirts) in the store I usually shoot to buy a dozen. If I have a little time on my hands at Unique Thrift Shop I look through the entire row of men’s T-Shirts until I accumulate just the right collection for my boy. He loves graphic tees, sports team logos and funny sayings. It works out really well. Really.

Less often, it is his pants that are shredded by day’s end, but it does happen. As I said – every day. I do wish that he wouldn’t do it, but he does. I am ask him not too. He says he is sorry. I am not exactly sure how I justify this situation in my mind so that it does not drive me completely crazy. I guess that’s just it – it would be really exhausting if I were going to make Holey Clothes the ‘thing’ that I lose my mind over. I’ll just have to save that for something else.

Although Dennis is no more fond of this hobby as I am, he says that I need to be thankful that we have the money to replace the clothes as he consumes them. Um, alright.