Male Pattern Shopping

My father died years ago, so I can’t ask him about his hat size, but I bet he knew it. I don’t know mine, and I’m willing to bet no more than a handful of men I know, do. Hats, at least the ones that come in sizes, just aren’t as popular as they once were.

I mention this because I recently bought a pair of gloves. They were on special sale, so they said, because of “limited availabilty,” by which they meant only one size left and not very many more of them. The one size was medium, the Goldilocks of all sizes, and after trying on a pair, I bought them.

I have no idea what my glove size is, either. Leaving aside, for the moment, male measurement theories having to do with hand size, if my hands are proportional to my body size, I’d imagine I should wear a large. These gloves are snug, but since I have no comparable fingerless bicycling gloves with which to compare them, maybe they all are. I could make them not fit, as OJ Simpson famously did in court, or, with about the same amount of effort, struggle into them and wear them.

The point is, they may or may not be my size, but I wouldn’t know.

Not satisfied with one questionable purchase, the long sleeved thermal T-shirt that I wanted wasn’t in my desired size, either. Unlike the arcane measurement systems used for hats and women’s clothing, these T-shirts came in small, medium, and large, but there may have been some extra-larges hanging around.

The one I wanted was large, which were all sold out. The salesman offered me a medium and told me the arms would be long enough, which is always an issue with me. The other issue, the more vain one, is that my stomach has grown to such a size that its girth is quite noticeable in most medium shirts, embarrassingly so. There was a large, but it featured white writing instead of the cool-looking bright green that I associate with Rock Racing, and I was momentarily stumped.
I could have the green, which seemed to fit, or the white, which I had more confidence in. I’ve never been very good at holding clothing up against my body to see if it will fit, as both the white and greens did. I went with the white, and when I later got home I understood the salesman’s remark about the arm size.

The arms on the one I bought nearly, but not completely, cover my hands.

I’d figured that anyone who rides a bike is more smelt than I am, but this one fits around my belly just fine. I don’t know if the green one would have, but I’m guessing the cuffs would have lasted longer.