Words of wisdom

I was trying to come up with a new Gchat status message the other day, and got some inspiration from an unlikely source: my roommate's food processor. The appliance's packaging states that "Life is one long delicious process." While this is basically true, it's overly dramatic and philosophical, considering the source. In other words, it was a perfect new status.

As expected, several friends have IMed me with some variation on "I love your status! What's it from?" And then I get to burst their bubble. I'm a great friend.

My favorite experience I've ever had along those lines happened my senior year of high school. I walked into my AP Stats class, and Mr. Timo Mostert asked me to hold still so he could read the quote on the back of my t-shirt: "You must show no mercy, nor have any belief in how others judge you, for your greatness will silence them all."

"That's really great," Timo said. "Whose quote is that?"

He was clearly disappointed when I turned around, revealing the author on the front of my shirt--the one and only Ultimate Warrior.

I spent some time on Google to see if I could find a picture of the shirt to post here. No luck, but surprisingly I did find some sites that attributed the same quote to Albert Einstein. While the statement in question is much more coherent than the typical Warrior soundbite, I have a hard time imagining Einstein uttering the phrase "show no mercy."

I actually still have that shirt. It's faded but amazingly has never shrunk, after 15 years of repeated washings. It's one of the few t-shirts I own that I purchased myself--and I wear almost nothing but tees. Here's the breakdown on how I obtained the shirts that are in regular or semi-regular rotation in my wardrobe:

Purchased by me--10
Received as birthday, Christmas, or just-to-be-nice gifts: 20
Hand-me-downs from siblings who outgrew them physically or, heaven forbid, matured emotionally: 12
Free shirts used to perform in or promote improv shows: 7
Work-related promotional shirts: 2
Shirts received for participating in hot dog eating contests: 1

So I bought less than 20% of the shirts I wear. And those 10 were bought either, like the Warrior one, at live wrestling events, or on the streets of New York (I Heart NY, etc.), or when I went to Scotland 5 years ago. No t-shirt that I currently wear was purchased by me in an American store. Kinda weird.

The WWE is coming to Utah this summer, so I may be adding to my wardrobe soon. I bet if either of these guys have a shirt, it will say something really profound on the back!