“You’re not wearing that, are you?” Sue was looking at me as if I were wearing a large flounder on my head.

“What?” I knew what she meant, but I wanted to hear her say it.

“That shirt.”

That shirt? This shirt was one of my favorites. It was actually made in Hawaii. How often are you going to find a Hawaiian shirt made in Hawaii? Once in a lifetime? Twice? It’s all cotton, not rayon like most of them nowadays. It is a work of art, the Rembrandt of my closet museum.

“It makes you look fat.”

I looked in the mirror. The shirt did not make me look fat. My fat made me look fat.

Sue has said, “You’re not wearing that, are you?” so often that I don’t really hear it any more. Sometimes I think she would say it if I were wearing a tuxedo to a formal dinner at the White House.

“You’re not wearing that?” she would say moments before we stepped out of the house, leaving me not enough time to change, but plenty of time to wonder if I was making some horrible fashion faux pas as we made our way through the D.C. traffic – like wearing white after Labor Day or leaving a price tag hanging off my sleeve.