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Most of my running shirts are from my alma mater, St. Olaf, the nerdiest of which has to be the one that has the three dropped letters of the Greek alphabet, Stigma Quoppa Wau, on the front, and "best fraternity ever" in Latin and Greek on the back. The most obvious, however, is the one says "St. Olaf" and then my class year in big letters.
Every so often while I am running along the treacherous streets of Berkeley someone will see the shirt and say to me, "I went to Carleton!" Which, for those of you not intimately acquainted with small Midwestern liberal arts colleges, is the other college in my college's town and also incidentally the real-world double of Blackstock in Pamela Dean's Tamlin. After much internal struggle (WTF do I care that these people went to Carleton), I decided that my stock response to this would be to say, "Um ya ya!" Which is our fight song chorus, and appropriate because we usually trounce Carleton at sporting events.
Today, however, while I was stopped at a corner, a young woman took off her earbuds and said to me, excitedly, "Is that a Golden Girls T-shirt?" Because, if you don't know small Midwestern liberal arts colleges or music schools, most people have only heard of St. Olaf as a joke made on The Golden Girls. (Full disclosure: Gatsby also worked for two weeks as a janitor at St. Olaf after the war.) I looked at her and I said, "No, it's a St. Olaf College T-shirt. It's actually a real place."
Yup, that one takes the cake.
Every so often while I am running along the treacherous streets of Berkeley someone will see the shirt and say to me, "I went to Carleton!" Which, for those of you not intimately acquainted with small Midwestern liberal arts colleges, is the other college in my college's town and also incidentally the real-world double of Blackstock in Pamela Dean's Tamlin. After much internal struggle (WTF do I care that these people went to Carleton), I decided that my stock response to this would be to say, "Um ya ya!" Which is our fight song chorus, and appropriate because we usually trounce Carleton at sporting events.
Today, however, while I was stopped at a corner, a young woman took off her earbuds and said to me, excitedly, "Is that a Golden Girls T-shirt?" Because, if you don't know small Midwestern liberal arts colleges or music schools, most people have only heard of St. Olaf as a joke made on The Golden Girls. (Full disclosure: Gatsby also worked for two weeks as a janitor at St. Olaf after the war.) I looked at her and I said, "No, it's a St. Olaf College T-shirt. It's actually a real place."
Yup, that one takes the cake.