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WotD: Hand down
I grew up in a large family of five children.
There was no fast fashion or online shopping at Shien.
Clothes came in a black garbage bag that you had to sift through to find something that you liked but, most importantly, fit you.
To hand down means to give something to someone else, usually from an older person to a younger one.
This is often seen in families like mine, where older siblings pass down clothes or toys to younger siblings.
Hand-downs were a normal part of growing up in my family of five children.
We learned to value what we had, as new clothing was usually saved for special occasions like birthdays and Christmas presents.
In modern terms, hand-downs or hand-me-downs served as a way to share items that were still in good condition but no longer needed by the older siblings.
However, in reality, it was all about the money.
There was never any extra money, and nothing was wasted.
Old clothes became oil rags for my father when he was working on the family vehicle.
For example, I have four sisters.
When an older sister outgrew her favourite dress, she would hand it down to a younger one.
Of course, they weren’t always thrilled about wearing something that wasn’t brand new, but over time, they grew to enjoy these hand-downs.
In our home, hand-downs were an economic necessity.
Buying new clothes for five children is very expensive, so we learned to accept the hand-down culture.
Although clothing wasn’t new, it was new to you.
New clothes were a treat we looked forward to during our birthday season or at Christmas.
Unfortunately, ‘new clothing’ meant socks and underwear, which are, needless to say, not the most exciting articles of clothing when you are nine.
In conclusion, clothing handed down from sibling to sibling teaches us about the value of money and as The Rolling Stones said:
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well, you just might find
You get what you need.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 73.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.
