Fresh Socks

Today started badly.

I had to wake up at 7:45. That time falls solidly in the portion of the clock that should read "here be dragons", complete with ornate scrawl and cartoonish monsters. Ugh.

Ah well, at least I could sleep in the car, since I didn't have to drive.

Or not.

You see, my sister's car was having trouble with its fan. If the fan was below the third setting, no heat would come out, which is somewhat miserable in the middle of a Minnesotan January. If the fan was at or above the third setting, the fan start putting out heat, but also start shrieking. Badly. Allow me to illustrate.

Imagine walking down a hallway. At the end of the hallway, you find a door and open it, only to find that Satan and all of his minions are throwing a wild, drunken rave/riot inside. The sound system at this demonic party is so big that nobody except heaven could possibly rival it. (Heaven wouldn't, of course, for fear of destroying the pearly gates with raw, unbridled sonic force. I'm just saying that they could, if they wanted to.) That's about what this fan sounded like.

I digress. The point is, sleep was impossible, due to either the noise or the frigid cold. To make matters worse, my sister decided that the time to fix this problem was now, in the middle of our trip.

To fully appreciate how horrible this was for me, understand that when I travel, I don't like to stop for anything short of an empty gas tank. I pretty much always do the trip in between my college and my home non-stop express style. I was fully prepared to grit my teeth and bear the bitter cold and/or shrieking death fan, but I was overruled. We had to wait at the mechanic's for a good hour or so while the fan was repaired. Eventually, though, we got back on the road and made good time the rest of the way.

Once we got back to the church parking lot where I had left my car for the weekend, I began the tedious process of chiseling it out of the snowdrift it had been encased in, courtesy of the recent blizzard. I told my sister I would be fine and that she could leave, not wanting to force her to wait around while I scraped. Silly me. I soon found that my car's wheels were helplessly stuck in two inch divots in the ice. Long story short, I called my sister back, got help from a couple of pastors who were inside the nearby church, dug and chipped at ice, gritted my teeth, and finally got my car free. It took another hour or more, during which I was also rewarded with a shovel to the legs, leaving me with a bloody, swollen, two-inch gash on one shin and a throbbing, scraped up knee.

When I finally got back to campus, I was miserable and about ready to start chewing through steel. I had to take off for class pretty quickly, so I didn't even have time to wind down. If I hadn't remembered a piece of advice I picked up somewhere (my brother, I think), I probably would have lost it. The advice is as follows.

When you're feeling crappy and beat up, go and change your clothes.

No, it's not a girly "a new outfit will make me feel better" thing. It's just that a fresh pair of clothes will leave you feeling like a new man (or girl, as the case may be). You don't even need to change your whole outfit. Put on new socks, clean underwear (of whatever variety you prefer), and a fresh shirt, and suddenly, life can seem a bit more bearable.

I didn't even have time for the full ensemble change, but ditching my slush soaked shoes and donning a fresh pair socks and some clean, white kicks was enough to make me feel like humanity didn't need stabbing.

Just a little trick I thought I'd pass along to you all. If you're having a crappy day and feeling run down, go pull on new clothes, even if you're not soaked and covered in dirt. The stuff closest to your skin is most important. Maybe there's something deeply spiritual about clean clothes, or maybe it just feels warm and soft, but regardless, you'll probably feel a little bit better when you're done.