Does your mother know you're wearing that shirt? (Minimal poker content)

Sometimes I just have to wonder what people are thinking when they select clothes to buy and wear.

The other day I saw a 30-something-year-old guy in the Venetian poker room wearing a t-shirt that said, on the front, "You have a nice ass," and, on the back, "What high school do you go to?"

I assume that people wear shirts with messages on them because they want to announce to the world something about their personality or their interests. Fine--I have no problem with that. I have my share of shirts commemorating an event I've been to or a product I like. I don't wear t-shirts much*, but if I did, I'd certainly consider ones that had stuff printed on them that I found funny or interesting.** I assume that people would either get and appreciate the joke--and thus think that they have at least a little something in common with me--or not like it, and thus probably not be my type.

But what on earth could one expect people to think of a guy who wears the nice ass/high school shirt? Did he buy it saying to himself, "Wow, people will think I'm so clever"? Does he laugh at it again every time he puts it on? When going through the drawer that morning to pick out a shirt, did he see this one and think, "Yep, that's the one that will convey just the right image of me today"?

Look, I'm not a prude, nor am I unrealistic about the sexual attractiveness of teenagers.*** It's just that I can't figure out what image of oneself one would be attempting to convey to the world by buying and wearing that particular shirt. Is it, "Wow, I really hope everybody sees that I enjoy fantasizing about sex with high school girls"?**** I mean, basically, what else can it be? Is there really anything that one can conclude about the wearer other than that? I suppose there's the possibility that he's being ironic, that he's actually the father of a teenage daughter, doesn't like the thought of her emerging sexual attractiveness, and wears this shirt in ironic defiance of his own true feelings. But that's quite a stretch.*****

Or maybe I just don't find the suggestion--however remote--of statutory rape to be as funny as this guy does.

Mostly, though, I suspect that I have thought about this guy's shirt, and what it says about him, a lot more than he ever has.******


*Not that anybody cares, but the pragmatic reason is that poker rooms tend to be really, really cold, so long-sleeved shirts tend to be a lot more comfortable. I also like to carry a pen and paper in my breast pocket for recording when and where I played, my results, things to look up when I get home, ideas for this blog, etc. So even long-sleeved t-shirts aren't my favorite garb, since they lack this crucial pocket.

**I just found this bunch of t-shirts (and posters, some of which should also be on shirts), which I would totally wear: http://xkcd.com/store/ (Thanks to Wil Wheaton's blog for the pointer: http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2007/08/my-awesome-t-sh.html.)

***There's the old joke, "What do you call a man who finds 15-year-old girls sexually attractive?" Answer: "Heterosexual." The point, obviously, is that all straight guys do. For most of human history, girls of what we now consider high school age were expected to already be having children. Assuming that there is a strong genetic component to what kinds of people one finds to be sexually attractive, it appears to be nearly universal that it includes adolescents of one gender or the other.

****Nothing in the shirt's message specifically mentioned girls, so it's at least theoretically possible that the designer and/or purchaser had high-school boys in mind. But I'm pretty dubious of that.

*****I love irony, and I can appreciate irony even in t-shirts. (As opposed to appreciating ironing of t-shirts, which I don't.) At the same Venetian poker table was a woman who struck me as exceptionally bright, likely an engineer or professor of some sort, wearing a shirt that said "Math is hard!" I assume that this was derived from and/or in deliberate reference to the infamous talking Barbie. (See http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002892.html for a nice summary of the history of that model, and how the "math is hard" expression emerged from it.) I further assume that this particular wearer loves math, and wears the shirt in proud irony--which I think is funny!

******This is now the most footnotes I've ever had in a blog post. Maybe I should start thinking of a better system, eh?