I’ve never been much of a collector.
Sure, I collected baseball cards when I was a kid, but failed miserably with stamps and coins. When I needed a dime for a candy bar, I had no qualms about pulling out a Winged Liberty Head dime to buy one.
I collected lucky buckeyes for a while, but when a friend once hit a passing Corvette with one and the owner chased us around our neighborhood, I decided they weren’t so lucky after all.
I do admire those who collect stuff. I knew a Thelma who collected thimbles (love the alliteration). My sister has tons of stuffed animals I like to place in compromising positions when I’m visiting. I like those who have a wall of different coffee cups on little hooks. I had a frat brother who saved the lint from his belly button — seriously.
These days, I have … hmmm …
Actually, when I think about it, I have a pretty good collection of T-shirts. Some of them don’t even have holes forming in their armpits.
I have two overflowing drawers of them. When I get new ones for gifts (I’m easy to buy for) or buy a couple while on vacation, I sometimes have to get rid of the really tattered ones just so I can close the drawers.
Of course, Chicago Cubs T-shirts lead the way. The current count is about a dozen and the one with both Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant’s names on the front still makes me a little misty.
I also have a T-shirt with “Bear Down” across its front, although it doesn’t have anything to do with the Chicago Bears. It’s a battle cry for University of Arizona sports teams. Those two words were uttered by the school’s quarterback for his teammates before dying from injuries suffered in an auto accident. Believe it or not, “Bear Down” pre-dates “Win One for the Gipper.”
I’m big on states shirts too. I can go from Alaska to Wyoming in my T-shirt drawers with a few other states in between. Once I wore a “Say Yes to Michigan” shirt while vacationing in Florida. When a couple of Michiganders asked what town I lived in, they acted as if they should remove it from me — kiddingly, I think — when I answered, “South Bend, Indiana.”
They had come out of a drinking establishment, which reminds me that I have a couple of T-shirts from bars — the Green Star Cafe and South Bend Brew Werks. No free beers for advertising for them, though — yet.
I actually have one of those silly “Keep Calm” T-shirts. Mine reads “Keep Calm and Hike On” with “Grand Canyon” underneath. Nothing was very calm about that trek when a ground squirrel beside the Colorado River scurried away with my the plastic bag of trail mix.
I have a couple from different high schools — Warsaw because my friend Dave had been athletic director there and Southeastern Hamilton in Fishers, Ind., because a couple of my granddaughters will be going there. My other granddaughters haven’t yet bought me a Penn High shirt — once the evil empire of my kids’ teams.
I guess they haven’t gotten me one of those “World’s Greatest Granddad” shirts, either. I won’t hold my breath on that one.
Maybe my funniest shirt is a drab green one that I bought before a canoe trip. On the back, it reads “Paddle Faster. I hear banjo music.” OK, maybe you have to be old enough to remember the movie “Deliverance” to get the joke there.
And then there is my slightly X-rated T-shirt that carries the words “Don’t Be A Prick” with “Boyce Thompson Arboretum” and pictures of cacti. The sweetest of little ladies smiled when she sold me that one in the gift shop.
On our recent vacation to Florida, I bought a T-shirt on Amelia Island that reads: “Life is Good” with just a baseball on it. I put it on the next day for a bike trip. A few miles into my ride, a giant squirrel came out of nowhere and ran in front of me. I jammed the brakes too hard and went flying over the handlebars.
Life is good, my aaaa … aching body parts. At least on that day.
Obviously, you can’t believe everything you read on a T-shirt. And when women wear them, it’s probably best not to stare anyway.