“You’re not going in that,” says my wife.

“What?” I say.

“That shirt, the one with the tag sticking through the hole in the collar.”

For the task at hand — going to the grocery store for bread and milk — my pale blue T-shirt is better than fine for the occasion. Never mind that the hole in question isn’t the designated neck hole. It’s a hole worn away just below it.

This is a dance replicated in many houses across the country: A wife objects that her husband’s apparel is objectionable.

Then there’s this telling exchange at the office:

“Nice shirt,” I nod to my colleague.

“Thanks,” he says. “It was my son’s.”

We exchange knowing nods. We both have grown sons, in-college and post-college. As parents we’ve seen it all, done it all, purchased it all.

We’ve been through Legos, fruit roll-ups, Transformers, mutant turtles, T-ball, driving lessons, college applications.

While trying to squirrel away a few dollars for college, we’ve given our little guys everything but the shirts on our backs.

And what do we have to show for it (except for grown-ups who are pretty decent guys)? Well, we have the shirts off their backs.

That’s right. Like my colleague, I wear my children’s clothes.

Not all of them. A few of them don’t exactly fit. However, back 10 years or more we had a garage sale. I was going through a box of T-shirts headed out the door. Though some of the shirts were too small for me, three were oversized for kids, as was the style. I snatched them up and put them in my drawer.

One of them now is faded green. It sags down to my knees. It has a tear in the arm pit. It is my night shirt. No one is going to take my green night shirt from me. My wife and I have discussed this.

My hand-me-up T-shirts fit into my new lifestyle as a nonconsumer. As a father of grown sons, I haven’t been in a toy store for years. Heck, except for groceries, home fix-up materials and desperation gifts, I avoid purchasing anything at all.

Clothes, for me, just happen. My wife buys me slacks, socks or a shirt as she deems necessary.

This puts a premium on hand-me-up clothes, as well as other items my kids used to have.

Face it. We spoiled our kids. We bought them more than they needed. I had one teddy bear when I was a kid. Right now, by contrast, we have an attic full of stuffed animals. Glassy-eyed in black trash bags, they provide fine insulation.

My kids were continually getting things that, as a child, I coveted. A Mousetrap game. An Operation game. A coonskin cap.

I wish I knew in what closet that coonskin cap was right now. I’d wear it to the office.

As for our grown sons’ apparel: My wife bemoans the fact that as nicely dressed and groomed as they were as kids, now they are slobs just like me.

I always let her make the calls when it came to buying nice things for them. “He’ll only be 6 once. He’ll only be 11 once.”

I could have told her she was spinning her wheels, sartorially speaking. Both boys would end up wearing ink-stained T-shirts with holes in their arm pits. It was pre-ordained. And pre-stained.

Tradition of wearing tatters

Back to a dad wearing hand-me-up clothes: the trend might be seen as a harbinger of hard times, men dipping into their children’s closets to find ways to cover up.

But that’s not true. Even if I had the money, even if raising sons hadn’t spent me into near-poverty, I would not buy a new T-shirt.

I am like my father in that regard. A child of the Depression, he would wear a shirt for all it was worth. I can still picture him in a white undershirt, a hole just left of the navel. He’d wear that shirt until it was all holes.

So, too, with my hand-me-up shirts. We’ll see you at the grocery store.

John Young’s column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.