Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on September 2011

My eyes drop, embarrassed, caught in a private encounter with someone I don’t know. I want to study his face to see if he really thinks this; I want to examine his soul; I want to test his English. A quick glance. He smiles at me, the vague smile of a passer-by, and then passes by, his t-shirt message along with him.

Damn, I’ve done it again. Succumbed to my urge, like jumping cracks on the pavement. I can’t stop. Don’t even know I’m doing it until I catch myself laughing, peering with screwed-up eyes at a stranger’s chest.

I don’t mean to stare—it’s just that, sometimes, the writing’s so damn small. If they have something to say, why not make it big enough so elderly people like me can read it at a glance? Instead, I end up cranking my neck forward in an odd gesture of perversion. I followed a guy for a while last week trying to finish reading the explanation of his Asperger’s syndrome, written in fine squiggly print down the back of his shirt. Just as it got really politically incorrect, he stopped rather suddenly. I nearly walked right into the back of him—a strange coincidence in a nearly empty street.

From my surveys, I’ve found most people are free of this affliction. They blur out t-shirt slogans like I blur out shoe shops. Where they see rows of pretty designer shoes, I struggle to recall seeing anything at all. They visit their shoe shops, walking along streets filled with empty shirts. Oh, the silent bliss.

It’s not a habit I’m proud of, this shirt-reading fetish, and more often than not it’s disturbing rather than entertaining. A small child passed me the other day, prancing alongside her mother, red writing splashed across her shirt. “Thank you for your life,” it said. I recoiled, horrified—what is this monster? No blood on her hands, no knife hidden behind her back. Her mother smiled at me—a friendly neighborhood smile or a menacing leer of intended aggression? I hurried past, hands reaching to protect my neck.

Then sometimes I just get frustrated. “Who knew?” says one shirt in a self-satisfied, knowing tone. Who knew what? I’m beginning to get agitated with the tantalizing mystery of it all, and look around to see the reaction of the crowd. Nothing. Obviously, whatever it is, they already know it too and only I am left, itching to know. Maybe I missed the previous shirt that had the answer typed in bold letters across the front. Who knows?

Somehow I ended up owning a shirt with writing on it myself.
“Hey!” say my friends whenever I wear it.
“Hey,” I reply.
“Hey!” they repeat, big smiles beaming.
Now I’m annoyed. What’s with the “hey?”

Oh yeah, it’s my damn shirt again. In selfish disregard to my fellow shirt-reading addicts I’ve added to the number of senseless words floating down the street. At least it is only one word. In big print.