I imagine the person who designed it going on to an amazingly successful full life — Nobel-Prize-winning scientist or somesuch — and still knows in their heart that this shirt will always be their greatest accomplishment.
Description: Tuscan Raider from the original Star Wars hoisting Lloyd Dobbler’s boom box over its head in homage to the iconic “In Your Eyes” closing scene from the Cameron Crowe-directed 80’s classic Say Anything.
It clicks on so many levels.
For starters, the juxtaposition of the Tuscan Raider’s Gaffi Stick for the boom box? Stop it. Wearing Lloyd’s coat? Get the f*ck out of here. Goddamn landspeeder replacing young John Cusack’s 1976 Chevy Malibu? Punch me in the face already.
Full disclosure I’m on V2 for this shirt.
Wore the first till it completely faded, which Lloyd’s love for Diane will never do.
Couple weeks ago we’re in the kitchen when Karry asks me about a charge on our credit card that looked suspicious.
Read aloud the name of a company she didn’t recognize.
“No, that’s me,” I said.
Was kinda’ hoping that would end her curiosity.
Had the opposite effect … like most of my good intentions.
“What did you buy?” she asked.
“It’s … a surprise.”
As an aside … that’s pretty good for me as far as comebacks under pressure go.
But it was late October. She knows I’m not that proactive with my holiday shopping.
“What did you buy?” she repeated.
“A t-shirt,” I confessed.
She: You bought a $35 t-shirt?
While it might seem like a yes or no question, the answer … was nuanced.
Me: No, I bought a $28 t-shirt.
She: (silence)
Me: Seven bucks for shipping.
Karry tends not to put on her cheaters to appreciate nuance.
For context, I love t-shirts.
My family prefers the word ‘addiction.’
It’s my only one.
Yep, T-shirts and postcards.
And, um, books.
T-shirts are among the reasons I don’t get tattoos.
I’m too easily seduced.
I fall in love too frequently … and fleetingly.
I mean, just when you see a design of a badass skull made up of tiny cats ($28 + $7 shipping), your feed serves up a silhouette of a man’s arm coming into frame to fist-bump a similarly silhouetted cat who looks like one of the cats who live in your house (Viktor).
The family staged an intervention a few years ago.
Unbeknownst to me, they harvested a bunch of t-shirts from my closet and had them made into a blanket … like parents do when their kids leave for college.
They were sneaky. Did it under the guise of my birthday and presented it as a ‘gift,’ … which forced me to suppress my immediate reaction, which was along the lines of, “You did … what ???!!!”
Some (most) of the shirts were still in regular rotation … including one of my all-time favorites: the orange GI Joe “Man of Action (With Lifelike Hair)” number that I found in a comic book store in Houston, Texas many years ago.
Joe’s head on the t-shirt had the same life-like hair as the action figure doll I had in the 70’s.
Glorious.
Over the years many wide-eyed smiles and fist-bumps from kindred spirits, most (all) middle-aged men, most (all) of whom proceeded to lose their sh*t when I pointed out that Joe’s coiffe was, in fact, life-like.
At night, when I am under the blanket, I can sometimes hear Joe softly sobbing.
Since the thoughtful-birthday-gift-slash-intrusive-intervention (still stings), we’ve operated under an uneasy detente.
For any new t-shirt I bring into the collection, I must remove one from my closet.
So I felt cornered when Karry called me out in the kitchen on my latest acquisition.
“It’ll be my last one of the year,” I blurted.
She: Yeah, right.
Me: No, seriously, last one of the year.
She: (silence)
Me: It’s only, like, two months. I can make it.
She: (silence)
While acknowledging that historical precedent would suggest, shall we say, an uphill climb, I pointed out that a little encouragement would, you know, go a long way.
She: You’ll never make it.
__
Couple weeks later, I’m downstairs when I hear yelling from the laundry room.
“Wait, did you get another t-shirt?”
While it seems like a yes or no question, the answer was … nuanced.
At the storytelling thing in the city I went to the night before, Jacob the producer gave me the t-shirt I won a couple months ago. They were out at the time.
I hadn’t bought it, so therefore had not violated the embargo.
I assured her that my t-shirt fast was still holding strong.
Then she did the thing she does sometimes … where she held her gaze a couple extra seconds without saying a word … letting me know she’ll be keeping an eye on me … until midnight strikes on Dec. 31.
Which I received as, you know, encouragement.
Recognizing that I still have about four weeks to go in my fast — which, let’s be honest here, will be brutal for the holiday algorithms ramping up to tempt me at every turn — I thought it’d be healthy to channel my energies away from my feeds and towards counting my blessings, by which I mean the treasures hanging in my closet.
Which history suggests are only ever a stealthy intervention away from being permanently removed from circulation.
So I’m here today to officially launch the TWELVE DAYS OF T-SHIRTS … a celebratory ‘greatest hits’ retrospective befitting, you know, a man of action with life-like hair.
The ones that bring me joy.
The ones that keep me in Cozy Mode as I clumsily navigate the world around me.
The ones that I impulse bought in spasms of poor decision-making somewhere between my second and third Moscow Mules.
Each one with its own story to tell.
Full disclosure: knowing that the odds of my following through to 12 are only marginally better than my resisting t-shirt temptation for the next four weeks … I will be receiving any and all feedback (including silence) as encouragement.
Re-watched all of my favorite holiday movies this season.
Except one.
A Charlie Brown Christmas, which we never got around to.
Destination TV when the kids were younger, though.
I mean, Linus droppin’ the mic at the end?
Puts a lump in my throat every time.
It was only this year that I was made aware of something I’d never noticed in all my previous watchings.
He drops the blanket, too.
In the climactic “Light’s, please” scene, right before he says, “Fear not …” Linus drops his blanket.
All those years I watched it, I never noticed it.
When a friend mentioned it to me, I got chills.
A sermon hidden in plain sight.
Looked it up online.
Yep.
Apparently, the Internet’s known about this for some time.
I asked my family if they were aware.
Nope.
Once I became aware, though, I couldn’t stop geeking out about it, asking friends. Sharing with those, who like me, were uninitiated.
Immediately thought of my high school buddy, Bob, an animator, who grew up a connoisseur of comics and cartoons.
I shot him a note … said I assumed he knew about this, but I couldn’t risk him not knowing.
He, of course, knew about the scene.
Shared the wisest reply.
“I did know about the dropped blanket thing, but I never really attached any significance to it.
“I always looked at it from an animation perspective, where I think Linus does a lot of arm gesturing during that scene and instead of animating a blanket moving around wildly with his arms, they just had him drop it and then pick it up again when he was done talking. I think the reason I thought that was because when Charlie Brown is talking to him right before Linus goes off, Charlie Brown drops his coat right before talking with his hands. Again, I assumed that was for animation purposes.”
Brilliant insight, which Bob’s always been good for.
At first his reply hit me like a splash of cold water.
“A Charlie Brown Christmas.” (Peanuts Worldwide)
So … a practical animation choice.
No sermon intended.
Nothing to see here.
Hmm.
But just because Charles Schulz may have been more interested in easing his animating burden doesn’t mean there’s not a sermon to be found.
Just because something isn’t true, or as intended, doesn’t mean it can’t be meaningful.
Otherwise myths wouldn’t exist.
Or religions, some might say.
We live in a world that would rather know how the trick is done than believe in magic.
Not me.
I’d rather be (open to being) awed.
I’ve learned to keep my antenna up for magic and meaning … even where it’s not supposed to exist.
Who says a perfect sermon can’t be found in a practical choice?
Even Bob in his wisdom agrees.
“But I guess in the big picture, it’s a much better story and makes more sense to say that Linus didn’t need security during that moment.”
We can let the blanket drop … without letting it get wet.
__
Sitting in my usual seat at my favorite coffee shop where I’m typing this, I watched an older woman, bundled head to toe for the cold, walk in to warm herself for a few minutes before catching her Saturday morning bus.
As she was trudging back to the door with 12 warm ounces in her hand, already bracing for the cold on the other side, a familiar downtown face came in, and seeing her, stepped to the side, and with his right arm, backhanded the door open for her.
Not the biggest fellow, he had to bend over a bit to muster the strength to brace the door open with just his one arm.
But from where I sat, his forced hunch read as a bow, imbuing his humble act with an added reverence.
Allowing the older woman catching her bus to pass through the door regal as a queen, nobly enrobed in her winter coat, her toboggan pulled tight like a crown.
She nodded thanks to him as she exited.
As if to a loyal subject.
It was a scene that neither would likely think of ever again.
She, a bus to catch.
He, cold hands to warm at the fireplace.
Me, a lump in my throat for the gift of bearing witness.
It was a scene I’m likely never to forget.
His bow. Her nod.
A sermon hidden in plain sight.
A sweet and simple reminder to be kind where we can to those we encounter along the way.
To humble ourselves to allow the strangers we meet to walk in dignity in an otherwise cold world.
If he’d have been holding a blanket in his right hand, he might have made the practical choice to drop it, too.
I love how my mother loved to write letters. She’d buy those long yellow notebooks by the packet and kept stacks of reserves on top of the kitchen fridge. She burnt through them almost as fast as the cigarettes she smoked when she curled up at the kitchen table to write, pen in one hand, lit Salem in the other, one foot on the chair, knee to her chest.
From what I recall, she mostly wrote to her sisters: her older sisters Ruth and Doris, and her younger sister Janet. (Mom was the sixth of seven kids … though the oldest baby died at childbirth).
____
As a kid I always held a special expectation at Christmas for the packages we’d get from my mom’s sisters Janet and Doris.
Their contents never had anything to do with whatever I’d petitioned Santa for. As a result, the annual postmarks from Coopersburg, PA (Janet), and Dayton, Ohio (Doris) always heralded a surprise or two.
ESPECIALLY Aunt Janet’s. Her boxes always contained the quirkiest, goofiest, orneriest stuff, which was very much in keeping with her personality. You never knew what you were going to get, and were never disappointed. It was stuff that always left you asking where on earth did she find that? The stuff that made you smile long after the Christmas glow had died to embers. Having to wait until Christmas morning to open Janet’s gifts was always excruciating.
By contrast, Aunt Doris’ stuff was usually a lot more austere, reflecting her personality. Doris was a business school graduate. I never saw her much, but I perceived her as pretty serious, worldly, super smart, professional (in the days when that was not what society necessarily expected of its women). Her holiday packages were always distinguished by a large can of Planter’s peanuts for Dad. Every now and then Dad would get a tall can of cashews. My childhood self registered this as lavish. Although Dad (and I) loved peanuts, we never splurged on them, never had them in the house. In my childhood memory I perceived cashews to be an extravagance beyond our means. It’s funny to think about now, but I always ascribed a special ‘fanciness’ to Aunt Doris’ annual cans of Planter’s. Overall, though, her gifts were practical, not spectacular. While always welcome, the arrival of her Christmas packages never registered the same high level of anticipation as Aunt Janet’s.
Until 1987 and the Christmas of my senior year of high school. In the annual package from Aunt Doris there was a surprise – a special gift for me. Last Christmas before college, I remember allowing myself high expectations for what was inside. It was big. Felt heavy in my lap. Too heavy for peanuts. I unwrapped it in earnest … to discover … a red, hardcover Webster’s College Dictionary, along with a note wishing me well in college. Really? A dictionary? I remember at the time putting it in the same category as getting a pair of socks. I considered it about the worst Christmas gift my 17-year-old self could imagine. She didn’t get me the way that Aunt Janet did, I remember thinking at the time.
Letters for Maggie 