Topless Tees
I have taken to wearing t-shirts with graphics or sayings on them. Some are from concerts I have seen. Some are of places I’ve been. Some are about Parkinson’s. Some are just plain t-shirts with no graphics or lettering. If I want to be antisocial, just do what I want and get home I wear a plain black tee. If I want to keep things to the shallow end of the socializing pool, I wear a t-shirt from Old 97’s show I went to or from the Tower Records in Tokyo. If I am feeling a little more feisty, I will wear one of my Parkinson’s shirts (link to my source is below). I wear these to raise awareness and educate others, and I really appreciate it when people ask me questions about my Parkinson’s rather than make assumptions.
I know that at least one day a week I will leave the house to go to the grocery shopping. Last week I was feeling the need to keep things superficial so I went with a new t-shirt that has a pinup model and lyrics from a John Prine song, Spanish Pipedream. You know, I had three people asked me to stop shopping so they could read the lyric “I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve.” None of these people that ever heard of John Prine, didn’t care what song it was from, and had to think very hard about the irony in the lyric. One of them summed up the experience saying, “I had to ask to read your shirt after I saw that beautiful woman on it.” I think he was disappointed with the lyric.
On my next trip to the grocery store I was ready to get on my Parkinson’s soapbox and wore the #ParkinsonsLooksLikeMe t-shirt. My medication was “off”,and this was before DBS. I was shaking all over the place. I was struggling putting the twisty thing on my bag of apples. I almost dropped a 12 pack of Topo Chico hard seltzer while putting it back on the shelf. (Yes, I put it back on the shelf, and I chose a flavored soda water instead). Despite my clear openness about my Parkinson’s and my smiling, friendly demeanor no one said anything. I am sure at least one person thought, “Well that explains it,” but I am pretty sure that the main reason was that no one cares as much about having Parkinson’s as I do. I am more sure that if there was an image of a pinup model on the shirt people would’ve stopped me and asked, “what d’ya got up your sleeve?”