#28daysoftshifts – My Truant Pen

#28daysoftshirts – Wrap up

I really enjoyed the project of sharing the stories behind my tshirt wardrobe. I’ve been writing for a long time (this blog is over ten years old), and I liked the chance to share and engage daily, but with a low threshold for how much I needed to write. I did learn a few things about myself across the venture, which I am shockingly turning into more blog fodder.

1) I have a lot of tshirts
This is perhaps the least surprising discovery of the adventure, but I was actually rather surprised at JUST how many I have, especially since I just cleaned out my tshirt drawer when I moved up to the attic. I’m guessing a total of 40 tshirts is crammed in that drawer, and find it unlikely I’ll have fewer any time soon. That likely means – given that I wear tshirts on weekends and Fridays – that I wear each shirt about twice a year. I love novelty and variety, so that feels true!

2) My shirts are an interesting reflection of my interests and values
The top themes are: mountains, coffee, Tolkien, roleplaying, work. Those are not a bad summary of the things I am interested in, and that I am willing to share with others. I was particularly intrigued to see how much my love and longing for mountains was reflected in this wardrobe. I suspect that’s particularly acute right now, when I feel like my beloved mountains are a four month journey away on either side. March is as far as you can get from hiking and camping time, and it’s an acute lack.

But there are also some tremendous gaps not reflected in my collection. There’s nothing of the Medieval in my collection. Music is under-represented, especially the early music I love best. I was shocked to realize I don’t have a single faithful/religious shirt of the non-blasphemous nature. My faith is something important to me, and which I would want to share aright. But so much Christian paraphernalia signals exclusion instead of love. And pretty much none of it is funny. What I really want is a funny Christian pride-ally shirt. Is that too much to ask?

3) I’m terrible at taking selfies and didn’t improve
My usually excellent phone camera keeps doing this jiggly refocus thing. I wonder if I need to fix it or something. Also, I’m really not good at taking a flattering selfie that also shows shirt text. I guess the upside is that I’m comfortable enough with who I am and how I look to post 28 days of unflattering photographs?

4) My things all have stories
I somewhat knew this before, but it was particularly interesting to notice. I had invested meaning in each of these shirts. I had a story about origin, or what it meant to me. Some of the shirts that didn’t seem like they could possibly be important, like the Go Climb A Rock tshirt are actually layered with deep meaning and values. This isn’t just a tshirt thing: I could do the same with coffee mugs, objects on my desk at work… honestly, most of the objects I live with. I think that this isn’t a standard and normal way to engage with the physical world (although it’s obviously also not a crazy outlier). I suspect that could lead to some hoarding tendencies, so I need to work to preserve the story and only keep the worthwhile objects. I also tend NOT to keep things that don’t have stories, even if I like them in abstract.

What did you learn about me? If you did this challenge too, what did you learn about yourself? What things do you have that you could tell thirty stories about?

#28daysoftshirts – Day 27 It cannot fail

Today’s tshirt is dissimilar in theme from so many of my other geeky tshirts. This one is geeky about obscure British comedy shows, instead of my usual themes of mountains, roleplaying games and coffee. The show Black Adder has the youthful versions of the greatest flower of British tv comedy: Hugh Laurie, Rowan Atkinson, Steven Fry, Tony Robinson. It’s childish, profane and utterly hilarious.

And over and over again, the eponymous (and only not the stupidest person in the world due to the presence of his man Baldric) Edmund Blackadder hatches *amazing* schemes with the words “I have a cunning plan“. You would be forgiven, if t his was your only exposure to the word cunning, for thinking that cunning means “Incredibly stupid and impossible to have succeed.”

Color: Black
Fabric: Stiff
Front Text: I Have A Cunning Plan

#28daysoftshirts – Day 26 Goblin Dan’s

We host three big parties throughout the year. There’s Mocksgiving, Piemas (coming up!) and the newest made up holiday – Flynns’ Fiery Feast. I have to admit that this tshirt was inspiring to me for the theme of the Fiery Feast (otherwise known as a BBQ). We’re now thoroughly into the realm of “tshirts that need more explanation” and this one is a key offender.

With the back story on this shirt, we return to the world of Roleplaying Games and Dungeons and Dragons. In that world, there is a long running web comic called “Order of the Stick” which is a comic about a D&D adventure. It’s been running for well over a decade, but I haven’t read it in years. In D&D, one of the monsters is a hydra, and should you battle this monster, you should NOT cut off the very tempting to cut off head or the monster will grow a second one (and get a second attack), up to a certain number (I thought it was 7 but the comic text says twice the original number). In one particular comic, they find a hydra with no max head limit. They keep cutting off heads until it gets headbound and they have defeated it. Then an enterprising Goblin (Goblin Dan) then opens up a BBQ joint serving cut off hydra heads.

Again, I think it’s hilarious. But you really have to have read this comic series – and maybe this one particular comic – to fully get the joke.

But ah, the tag line! “Decapitated ’til you’re sated”. GENIUS!

I’m definitely feeling the pressure of the end of the week! I have like 5 more shirts I want to wear and a hoodie too!

Color: Black
Fabric: Stiff
Text: Goblin Dan’s All-U-Can-Eat Hydra Head BBQ Hut & Tiki Bar – “Decapitated ’til you’re sated”

#28daysoftshirts – Day 25 Let’s Go Climb a Rock

Three years ago this week I attended my grandmother’s funeral in Merced, California. The family-sitting-around-the-table time included a lot of stories about the trips up to Yosemite with the camping trailer and the four kids and even my great-grandparents. Our celebration of my grandmother’s life included the part in church (which was a huge part of who she was), and also included a trip up to Yosemite Valley – another huge part of her life. We just missed the firefall, but the weather was clement and we hiked up the sides of the valley past rotten snow and remembered stories of bears and cookies and pranks and times past.

My mom always had this t-shirt, a light heathered blue with dark blue trim, straight from the 70s. I still have it somewhere in a box. It said, “Go Climb a Rock” on it and I loved it. Climbing boulders at Yosemite was a favorite memory from my childhood too, although rarer than my excursions in the northern mountains. What a great commandment – “Go Climb a Rock”. Stop taking yourself so seriously. Just get outside and be a kid.

So on this trip, I bought a t-shirt of my very own that says this very thing, and remembers the four generations of mountain-loving women I come from.

Color: Orange
Fabric: Stiff
Front Text: Yosemite Mountaineering School and Guide Service
Back Text: Go Climb a Rock