I don’t like to wear clothes that are smarter than I am, so I don’t often wear anything that displays a slogan or advertisement, or even a cartoon.  But there are exceptions.  At the moment I have a rather swell t-shirt that says simply “Drinks well with others.” I think that’s nice.

I don’t do souvenir shirts from my travels. The only shirt like that I have is over twenty years old, I think, and still gets worn occasionally at the gym.  It pictures a congo line of blue-foot boobies doing high kicks across the front.  Is merely says Galapagos.  That one is special.

Otherwise, my only experience with wearing t-shirt philosophy was in the early 70s, when I was studying at Boise State U.  I had two such t-shirts:  one said “Assume Nothing”  and the other:  “I have abandoned my search for Truth.  I’m now looking for a good fantasy.”  Typical mature-age uni student attitude, I guess.  My attitude hasn’t changed much, come to think of it.

In more recent years–except for the “drinks well with others” item, my forays into t-shirt philosophy are  mostly confined to gifts to my grandsons.  My eldest grandson in particular.  He has a talent for acquiring good t-shirts.  Never corny, never crude.  Always witty.  For example, there’s one picturing a bear, sitting on a toilet in the middle of the woods.  The caption simply says  “Yes.”  So it is a challenge for me to find one that meets his scintillating standards.  My one real achievement in that regard was a t-shirt I found in Lawrence, Kansas, that pictured several rows of animal poops, with the name of each animal written neatly below the pictured scat.  On the lower left corner of the t-shirt front was the small caption “Endangered Feces.”  Ryan’s response was to warm the cockles of his grandma’s heart: “Thanks, Grandma.  I think this must be the only t-shirt that combines environmentalism, scatology, and puns.”   High praise, indeed!

I did come across one recently that tickled me.  The writers amongst you will understand why.  It pictured Shakespeare, with the caption “This shit writes itself.”

Ah, well.  It’s good to get that off my chest.        MM