Next weekend, I will get a new T-shirt, thanks to another 5K race. I don’t know how many T-shirts I have, but it’s a lot. And I’m not sure if it should be spelled “tee shirt” or maybe just “t-shirt” with a lower case ‘t’. But they are a large staple in my wardrobe. On the average weekend, I’ll go through 5 or 6… 1-2 for running/biking, 2 for yard work and 2 for trying to appear presentable out running errands. It’s like a uniform, albeit a comfortable uniform.
We know clothes say a lot about us, but t-shirts have the unique ability to reveal even more - depending what’s on them. I was in Home Depot studying carpenter bee poisons this weekend and a shopper near me asked, “Do you work for J&J?” For a split second I was thrown by the question, but then realized he was reading my 14-year old t-shirt from J&J’s Earth Day celebration. (I keep favorite t-shirts a long time and I designed that particular one.)
An arriving alien might conclude we all belong to gangs – that t-shirts are like gang colors – unique identifiers of the social groups we belong to. My first gang was New Orleans. New Orleans has entire shops dedicated to drawing you into their seedy gangs. My favorite t-shirt ever came from there – pale pink with letters across the front that read, “All this and brains too”. It just seemed so apt. That shirt died a long time ago, but it still makes me smile to recall it. My current t-shirt collection would reveal my affiliation with at least three gangs – J&J, USMA/West Point and 5K races.
On the subject of 5K race t-shirts, there are good ones and ugly ones. The ones from the annual Flemington Turkey Trot are very ugly; they are my work shirts for the yard. The ones from the Big Chill (Rutgers) are among the best; they always have a cute polar bear design. I don’t wear the current race t-shirt when I run but many people do. The thing I find funniest at the races are people who wear their marathon race shirt to a 5K race…making sure we all know that the 5K race is really quite below them. They’re the same people with the “26.2” oval on their cars.
I helped a friend make a t-shirt quilt for her daughter going off to college and though I’ve thought about doing one for myself, I’m not ready. I don’t want to use the ugly ones and if I like them, I’m still wearing them. So it’s one quilt that will probably never get made. Meanwhile, a visiting alien will conclude that I’m for rivers and against breast cancer; but most importantly, that I have a whole Amy at my disposal and they should be very afraid.
We know clothes say a lot about us, but t-shirts have the unique ability to reveal even more - depending what’s on them. I was in Home Depot studying carpenter bee poisons this weekend and a shopper near me asked, “Do you work for J&J?” For a split second I was thrown by the question, but then realized he was reading my 14-year old t-shirt from J&J’s Earth Day celebration. (I keep favorite t-shirts a long time and I designed that particular one.)
An arriving alien might conclude we all belong to gangs – that t-shirts are like gang colors – unique identifiers of the social groups we belong to. My first gang was New Orleans. New Orleans has entire shops dedicated to drawing you into their seedy gangs. My favorite t-shirt ever came from there – pale pink with letters across the front that read, “All this and brains too”. It just seemed so apt. That shirt died a long time ago, but it still makes me smile to recall it. My current t-shirt collection would reveal my affiliation with at least three gangs – J&J, USMA/West Point and 5K races.
On the subject of 5K race t-shirts, there are good ones and ugly ones. The ones from the annual Flemington Turkey Trot are very ugly; they are my work shirts for the yard. The ones from the Big Chill (Rutgers) are among the best; they always have a cute polar bear design. I don’t wear the current race t-shirt when I run but many people do. The thing I find funniest at the races are people who wear their marathon race shirt to a 5K race…making sure we all know that the 5K race is really quite below them. They’re the same people with the “26.2” oval on their cars.
I helped a friend make a t-shirt quilt for her daughter going off to college and though I’ve thought about doing one for myself, I’m not ready. I don’t want to use the ugly ones and if I like them, I’m still wearing them. So it’s one quilt that will probably never get made. Meanwhile, a visiting alien will conclude that I’m for rivers and against breast cancer; but most importantly, that I have a whole Amy at my disposal and they should be very afraid.