Browsing through a catalog this morning, I came across a garment described as a "smock." The very word transported me back to elementary school where, every year for art, we were asked to bring in an old shirt of our dads' to use as a smock. I could remember pulling on the over-sized garment that somehow still smelled like my father, my classmates and I a tiny, clownish white-collar work force. The buttons were always a struggle, and the sleeves dangled far below my hands; the cuffs were uncontrollable, dragging through the tempera paint and on to the paper as if they had an artistic vision of their own. At the end of class, having done their diligent duty, the spattered shirts went back on the hook or into the cubby, neglected until next time. By the end of the year they must have been a work of art themselves, but I couldn't tell you what happened to them once that final school bell rang in June.
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