A Suitable Dream

"The finest clothing made is a person's skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this."
-Mark Twain

I have a dream.
My Spouse had one last night, however, and it takes precedence for its outlandishness. He was at an airport terminal and presumably waiting for a flight. He was dressed in his best suit which, let us err on the side of caution and be less than generous, is about twelve years old. It might well be more but we need not delve too deep into Spouse's inability to purchase clothing. The suit is one that he wore at our wedding and I think it looks perfectly dapper.
My Spouse, as I say, was standing in the airport wearing this suit. He was dressed also in a white shirt of which the sleeve was clearly visible below the cuff.
Suddenly Spouse caught sight of an old college friend. The peculiar thing is that it happened to be a fellow he had neither seen nor thought about in fifteen years. His materialising all of a sudden in a dream seemed to be most odd.
My Spouse was delighted to see his old acquaintance and began to wave his hand to catch the friend's attention. The friend, meanwhile, was strolling along, obviously with somewhere to go, and he was, Spouse noted, wearing a very fine suit.
Spouse waved and waved and it seemed that the man would not see him, or was perhaps ignoring him. Finally, when avoidance was unavoidable, he made eye contact with Spouse.
He came closer and touched my Spouse on the sleeve of his suit.
"Your sleeve is showing," he offered. "You really should get a new suit."
The dream vapourised in the morning light and that fragment was all my Spouse could recall.
I understand fully that the incident was a figment of my Spouse's imagination but we have talked before about this matter: why discard a suit or item of clothing or indeed anything at all based on its passing the sell-by date? The so called 'time is up' concept is particularly objective.
I have a dream. I dream of a world where people are judged not by the age of their clothing but if anything by the number of happy or significant events that passed while wearing that particular outfit; not by the holes in their shoes but by the count of the other pairs they sighed wistfully over before buying bread with the money, or shoes, perhaps, for somebody else.