The first thing I notice is the period. On the dark shirt, the word meh sits centered and very small, lowercase, followed by a full stop. Not an exclamation point, not a question mark, not a winking emoticon. A period. The smallest possible mark of finality, attached to the smallest possible word of disinterest. The…
Two circles sit on the shirt, and only one of them is real. At the upper left, a dashed outline marks where a ball used to be. At the lower right, a solid white ball rests on a flat ledge. Between them, a curved ramp descends. Above it all, in white capitals: I HAD POTENTIAL.…
The shirt does not say shy. It does not say quiet or reserved or please give me a moment. It says NOT FRIENDLY in the flat, capitalized voice of a hazard placard, and then it says DO NOT TOUCH, and between those two commands sits a yellow caution triangle with a hand inside it, crossed…
The first thing I notice is the cat. Not the word Daddy, which sits below it in the same light lettering, and not the dark ground that holds everything together. The cat is a silhouette, centered, and it is flanked. On its left, a C. On its right, a T. The two letters stand at…
The shirt reads GOT TOO SILLY in plain capitals across the top. Below the words, a white goose-like bird stands in an orange prison uniform, holding a black mugshot board. The bird’s expression is not contrite. It is the flat, forward-facing stare of someone who has been processed and is now waiting for the next…
The shirt does not show a garden. It shows four root vegetables — carrot, radish, beet, onion — arranged around a sentence, each one smiling, each one with its root drawn down into visible soil. The words run around them: LET’S ROOT FOR EACH OTHER AND WATCH EACH OTHER GROW. What interests me is not…