Naff t-shirts

I've just had a road-to-Damascus experience (well actually it wasn't on an actual road and I definitely wasn't going anywhere near Damascus, but I couldn't just call it a "standing in my wet and cold bathroom" experience).

The vision and the truth that came to me in a blinding flash of, erm, water is this great pearl of wisdom: humanity is built upon that solid bedrock of civilisation, the naff t-shirt.

Don't you feel sorry for the poor downtrodden runt of the fashion family? Whenever family and friends go on holiday anywhere vaguely interesting (or Frankfurt) they always buy you a t-shirt with the name of the city or country blazened in glorious PVC with, if you're lucky, a naff picture of the symbol of that place alongside. Like a red bus. Or a pie. Or something. When you receive said gifts, you think "what a nice thought, but am I actually ever going to wear it in the company of any other member of the human race?"

Well... actually... I actually do, do I. No-one ever SEES me wearing them, but the reality is that I actually wear naff t-shirts all the time! (I actually wear them more than I use the word "actually", actually.) I wear them in bed every night, I wear them hidden under other clothing every day in winter, and I even wear them under work shirts if said work shirts are thick and dark enough to mask the crime against taste and tourism that lurks beneath. I have a mammoth stock of the stuff breeding away and perpetually in the cycle of wash, dry, wear, wash, dry, wear, wash, dry, wear, until they start getting a bit stale and tatty, and then I cheerfully continue to wash, dry, wear them until they begin to really fall apart and beg me to put the proverbial gun against its proverbial temple (if it had one) to put it out of its sartorial misery.

That's when phase 2 begins and they begin a whole new life as rags in the kitchen, rags in the bathroom, and rags everywhere in the home, to be used to mop up dirt and mop up water and just generaly be very useful in keeping the place clean. Why buy cleaning cloths from the supermarket when you have a wardrobe full of them, which, as long as Ryanair are in business will continue to be stocked with naff t-shirts from all over the world!

Maybe it's just a Chinese thing in that saving money through squeezing value out of the naffest of your possesions is the only true path to happiness. But it's better than actually wearing them in public view, shurely?