Clothes May 21, 2014May 20, 2014 Who invented them? Think about it! Apes don’t wear them. Chimps only wear them when they’re working. And don’t dress themselves even when they are. For how many thousands of generations did we go around naked, shivering, and, after a certain age, not looking our best? Who got the idea — and the tools — to skin an animal and then wear that skin? (Gross!) And the needle and thread, or primitive equivalents, to stitch it up? Who thought of buttons? My day dreams often try to imagine those distant ancestors and their day dreams . . . of flying through the air, like birds, and being warm when they were cold or cool when they were hot. And then I snap back to the current reality . . . the same species, a thousand generations later, flying through the air — fully clothed, fashionable even — with magic in our pockets operable even at 37,000 feet, on the cusp of all but unimaginable global prosperity — if only we don’t hurtle off the rails.