I’ve been cleaning out my bedroom at my parents’ house recently, and occasionally, I’ll take a few moments to look through my box. Every sentimental kid has a box. You know, the one full of your childhood, high school, and college memories? Mine’s huge. It’s one of those under-the-bed storage containers, and it’s full to the brim with pictures, invitations, cards, letters, scrapbooks, and other memory paraphernalia.
I make a point to toss out a few things every now and then for good measure (so there’s room to add more, of course), and I almost threw a high-quality piece away. I opted not to. What is it? You may be asking yourself…
A tee-shirt
But it’s not just any tee-shirt. It’s one of those handmade with markers and paint white tee-shirts that high schoolers make for school spirit. Except that no where on it does the shirt say, “Go Rams!”
The shirt, made with two other matching tees (worn by my two actually-musically-talented pals, Sophie Bee and Kathrine Anne), had big bright letters that said, “Dillinger’s Biggest Fans.”
Who is Dillinger?
Well, Dillinger was our Music Theory AP student teacher. (Yes, I took MT AP. And barely made it out by the skin of my teeth.) 1st period of second semester. Every day. We walked in to see this handsome college guy, who would soon be a real high school music teacher. Oh-how-we-adored-him. So, like any love-sick teenage girl, we decided that we would make tee-shirts.
Using our crafty knowledge (as cheerleaders and poms) we followed standard tee-shirt protocol, using markers and paint in school colors to showcase our spirit. We gave ourselves numbers, and added Dilly (as we lovingly referred to him) quotes, like “Easy Peasy” and “I’m not trying to ignore, I’m just trying to share the wealth.” That last one, I’m sure, is because we demanded his constant attention…and he wasn’t always around us.
We wore these tee-shirts to a Friday night football game, to share our adoration with the world. Walking in front of the marching band and Mr. Dillinger was a pretty scary feat, but we really thought that it was a great idea. We pranced around showing off our “cool” tee-shirts and walked right up to him and showed him our awesome shirts. I’m pretty sure that Dillinger was incredibly embarrassed, and having now been a student teacher, I can say with perfect confidence that he likely had no idea what to do other than smile and laugh and tell us that we were a little crazy.
Indeed we were. Indeed. We. Were.
