The summer when I was in high school, one weekend, my mother took me to the nearby shopping mall to buy me some new T-shirts I could wear to school. Not particularly interested in fashion, I walked around the floor of ladies’ clothing dispassionately when my mother signaled to me in front of a rack of discounted T-shirts.
“What do you think of this one?” she waved a wine-red coloured T-shirt.
It was short-sleeved and slim fit with minimum decoration. There was just one chest print that said Fantastic.
“Stylish. I like it.”
“There is this one, too,” my mother pulled up another T-shirt, very similar to the Fantastic T-shirt, but this one was black and the chest print said Refined.
“Refined?” I frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means sophisticated,” said my mother. “Like me.”
“I think I want to be more fantastic than refined.”
“Then, how about you take the fantastic one and I take this refined one?”
And so we went back home with those two T-shirts among other things.
The next day, I wore my brand-new Fantastic T-shirt and my mother her Refined T-shirt.
“So, today, I’m fantastic and you are refined,” I pointed out. “We’d better behave that way!”
The two T-shirts became our favourites, and even to this day, my mother still wears her Refined T-shirt in summer, and when I visit her, I join with my Fantastic T-shirt. Though old and worn-out, they are still fantastic and refined T-shirts.