Not My Fault

I have t-shirt designs on my mind lately. I don’t know why, because my favorite t-shirts have nothing on them at all, much like the inside of Molly Ivin's brain.

Still, I like to read the words and phrases on t-shirts because sometimes they are funny, sometimes crass, and often stupid and sometimes I don’t get them.

For example I kept seeing the t-shirt “Vote for Pedro” while watching Red Sox games and I thought they were made special for Pedro Martinez, until I actually saw the movie ‘Napoleon Dynamite’. The movie left me grinning like Bill Clinton at a divorcees convention. And of course after seeing the movie, then I ‘got it.’ Now I actually want a ‘Vote for Pedro’ shirt, eschewing my normal attraction to blankness.

You’re still imagining President Bill at a divorcees convention aren’t you?

Some of you know, but new readers will not that I ran on a gold medalist 4x100 relay team at this years’ Penn Relays in Philadelphia. (I try to mention this as often as modesty allows, approximately every five minutes) Naturally I was a little nervous since I was running at Penn for the first time. There were 39,000 spectators and I had to hand the baton to a teammate that is widely accepted as the world’s fastest human over 50 years old.

When the race was complete I was feeling very relieved that the task was over and the victory belonged to Houston Elite. Do you know that feeling where something has gone well and you had been very nervous beforehand? We always breathe that big bundle of fresh air of relief and say something like “thank goodness that’s over?”

Well that was the feeling I had that day afterward and also of course some happiness.

After all the photos with teammates and clothing reps I headed off to a restroom. Right behind was my teammate Mark Hastings who had run the first leg on our team. While standing at the urinals, Mark looked over at me with a wry smile and issued the following remarkable phrase………”well, we won, but it wasn’t my fault.”

I began laughing so hard while in mid pee stream that the patrons adjacent to me began to hurriedly zip and back away from the urinals. I will leave the sight of a full grown man collapsed into giggles at a full bank of urinals to your imagination. I think it was the release of the tension that had been building for days before the race.

Mark was making reference to the fact that our other two teammates are enshrined in the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame. Both hold World Records in the sprints. Mark and I are on the team of course for good and fast reasons, but compared to our other two teammates we would be considered the ‘less than Hall of Fame’ members of the team.

That is what Mark was addressing and what made the phrase so funny to me.

Now, unless I rearrange this little t-shirt joke of mine I suppose it is probably not funny to you. I have also sworn off discussions of politics here, because frankly it's just too easy.

So, here’s the deal. I have found the perfect application for this t-shirt. And it tells you nothing about my politics because it fits and it is funny. (To me)

Have a great day of American Courage.