You have heard the old saying, "Been there, done that, and bought the T-shirt." That is a saying you use to show that you have experience and that you have seen everything, you are filled with skill and can do most anything. You even have the t-shirt to prove you were at the festival, ball game, or some bizarre gathering - you are in charge.
Who doesn’t love a T-shirt that proves you have attended some great event? If you have a shirt that says you were at a Michael Jordan basketball camp, wouldn’t that prove you are a better basketball player than your friends?
I have some shirts from special meetings and those shirts make some of my friends jealous and that is just the way things are. Mostly, these shirts just advertise something strange as it sounds, we love advertising. When I was in elementary school, I wanted PF Flyers shoes. These shoes would make you run faster, jump higher and hit a baseball a half a mile, now I don’t really get shoes like that but you know what I mean.
Special shirts that are gifts are great too. Getting a shirt from a convention or festival that is far away is awesome. Your friends are jealous and you didn’t have to make the trip across the country, that is a double bonus.
One of my motorcycle friends came up with rules for getting a T-shirt from a motorcycle shop. I didn’t know if there was such a rule but he swears it is in the first chapter of biking lore.
You cannot go to a motorcycle shop and buy a shirt for yourself unless you rode your motorcycle there that would be a mortal sin. He claims that people have fallen over dead from doing that. If you ride to the motorcycle shop in your car, you are allowed to buy a gift for someone else.
This makes some sense: He was just at a motorcycle shop and he bought a shirt for his friend. His biker friend was going to stop by the same shop a month later to buy him a shirt. That way, they wouldn’t break the rule about driving to the motorcycle shop in a car.
His girlfriend was standing behind him as he explained the intricacies of this t-shirt buying business. You could hear her eyes roll and she finally said, “Like he really needs another motorcycle shirt.”
My friend also claims that the worst sin of biking is towing your motorcycle to a bike rally. That would defeat the whole purpose of going to the bike rally.
After he explained all the intricacies of the shirt buying, he bought a shirt for his friend. The shirt had the name of the town where this motorcycle shop was located. That way you could add to your shirt collection and it looks like you have driven all over the country and got the T-shirts to prove it.
I love interesting and special shirts, too. I try not to get involved with too many rules though. I don’t want to be accused of just buying a shirt and not doing the rule work of gaining the acceptance that really wouldn’t be fair.
One thing was funny about my friend's purchase was he got two shirts and one of them was his size.
