( The Cheerful Polo )

“When I started dating Anna, we were living on different continents. A few days before her first visit to the United States, I bought a cheap short sleeved yellow shirt at an outlet mall. I usually don’t care much about clothes but I simply needed a short sleeved shirt that looked somewhat presentable.”

I picked her up at the airport in that shirt. I don’t think I thought about it consciously but the shirt was a happy and cheerful looking shirt and I think it somehow embodied the occasion.

The next time I picked her up from the airport – some months later – I wore the same shirt. She pointed out I had worn the same shirt the time before. And so the tradition began. We had to keep doing distance for a while as my visa didn’t allow me to stay in the UK, thus I was constantly on the move trying to stay within immigration laws. Anna would visit me wherever I was in Europe: Germany, Greece, Slovakia, and again in the US.

At one point I was in Germany, but my days of Schengen ran out and I had to go home. I ended up flying back to the US with a 12 hour layover in London. We weren’t going to see each other for a couple months, so Anna wanted to surprise me and came down from Edinburgh. I was both surprised and flattered as it was during her exams period, she even arranged her flights to fly in and out of the same airports. She emailed me the night before. I checked my email when I got to Heathrow, put on my trusty yellow shirt and waited 1/2 hour for her flight to arrive.

We overcame the distance when I moved to Edinburgh permanently, but the tradition continued the next several years.  Every time she would leave, I would pick her up wearing the same cheerful yellow short sleeved shirt.

( Boyd )
( USA )