The Story Behind The Shirt

Today I realized that I needed to blog about a free topic, and I had no idea what to say. I knew I would need some inspiration from a close friend and also get feedback on ideas I had. I wanted to be original, and decided that I should come up with a creative idea that no one would expect to hear. This afternoon, it was time to start brainstorming, and as usual I rejected ideas that others had because I didn't want people to get the wrong impression. So eventually my friend, Kirstie, gave me the insane idea to blog about a shirt I was wearing. I thought, "how insane is that? There's no way I can write two paragraphs on a t-shirt!" But then I reconsidered and decided to blog about just that!

The shirt I'm wearing says "Keep Austin Weird" on the back side, referring to Austin, Texas. The whole idea of actually thinking about the shirt came about early last year when I saw my sister wearing a baseball cap that said the exact same thing. I'd seen her wear it before, but I didn't want to tell her directly because it wasn't that important to me. But on this day in particular I felt like bringing it up, so I said, "hey, where'd you get that hat?" She told me she got it in Texas, and then I told her I wanted a shirt that said that. I wasn't thinking about it, but this day was a few months before my birthday, so this might have been the best, if unexpected, time to bring up the idea. And I'm sure I gave her a pretty good idea to think about in advance, so I hoped she would make considerations to it.

For my birthday, I went to the beach with family and friends so we celebrated then, but she wasn't around at the time. It wasn't really that much of a letdown, because I don't usually see her often. The next time I saw her was in the middle of summer, like around early July. As always, close relatives who miss my birthday will send me gifts in the next week or so after my birthday, and she came back with one for me. It felt like forever since I even thought about the shirt, and there it was in the gift bag, a deep purple shirt with "Keep Austin Weird" on the back. I was more than grateful because the gift was honestly the most meaningful of all. The main reason I like the shirt is because of the slogan, because even though it's kind of offensive, it describes my personality, although people do tend to enjoy it. To this day, I still like to wear it because it's comfortable and creative at the same time, and I can tell it's a shirt that any person from the South can wear freely.