What’s the longest you’ve ever worn a shirt backwards without knowing? I don’t mean inside-out. That happens all the time, and you can go all day like that. People might even think it’s intentional. I’m talking about backwards, where the little label in the collar ends up under your chin.
I usually catch myself after the first five minutes of wearing a shirt backward. I call that my mean-time-to-backward-shirt-awareness, or MTBSA. I monitor that metric because once it hits 15 minutes I know it’s time to start wearing a fishing hat and driving slowly in the passing lane.
My tennis partner once showed up for our match with his shorts on backwards. It didn’t make much difference except when he tried to put his balls in his pocket. [Insert your own joke here. But don’t use “That’s gotta hurt” because I just did.]
I can no longer count on other people to alert me to the fact I’m wearing a backward shirt. Not since I became invisible. And by invisible, I mean I’m an adult male over the age of 35. Beyond that age, no one has any reason to look at you. People are neither aroused nor curious about my existence. I’m pretty much just taking up space. I would give up on clothing entirely except that I know I would take far too long applying suntan lotion to my private parts.
But none of this is my point. My point is that it’s lucky we can’t see into the future. If we could, we’d be totally bummed out about why we didn’t think of solutions to problems sooner. But if we could see the future, we WOULD have those solutions sooner, rendering my whole point a confusing mess.
Anyway, in the future, I believe shirts will be omni-directional. You’ll be able to wear them forward or backward and it’ll all be the same. It won’t matter if you poke your head through the arm hole. That’ll work too. The fabric in the shirt will have sensors that detect what a raging dork you are and adjust the shirt accordingly.
By the time that happy day comes, I’ll be more invisible than ever. But I’ll also be old enough to violate all social norms with impunity. I plan to poke my head through an arm hole and do me some pinching.