The Woobie

With nothing better to do the other day as I walked to work, I was thinking about the physical and verbal baggage that comes with having ex-lovers in your past. Not that this baggage is bad, but it's odd to occasionally look at a cup and think 'Mr. X gave me that; wasn't that relationship a million years ago'.

Recently, one of my favourite shirts got a hole in it, and I announced at home, "This will be my new woobie!" When I was seventeen, my first boyfriend was an engineer. He was a nice fellow, but once I started university and realized that there was more to life than what a small town existence offers, we soon grew apart in interests and society. Eighteen years later, I have nothing tangible left from that year-long relationship aside from the word "woobie".

I don't actually even know how to spell the word "woobie". All I know is that the Engineer always used it to mean 'a shirt that is really warm and comfortable, but that is in such bad shape that you could never wear it outside your house'. I've lost the endless stream of Monty Python jokes that I picked up hanging out with the engineers, and I've certainly lost a taste for Molson Canadian beer, but I think the woobie has stuck.