Thursday, September 20, 2007

That Shirt Is 70 Years Old in Internet Years

At Starbucks last week, I stood in line behind a guy in a shabby "MAC OS 8.5" shirt. I was once a Mac aficionado, until the much lower cost of PCs turned me to the dark side. I fondly remember the breakthrough that was Mac system 7.5; the last OS I had was Mac 8.6. A long time ago. (For those unschooled in the Mac OS, Apple is about to introduce OS 10.5 in October.)

I wonder what it says about someone who keeps a shirt far longer than the lifespan of the OS the shirt advertises. Is it like wearing a Mike Mussina Orioles jersey to a Yankees game? Is he trying to show his decade-plus devotion to the Mac? Is he just an unmarried guy without a woman to go through his old t-shirts and draw the line at tech-geek shirts from 1997 that are so worn out the guy's nipples are visible?

Any insight would be most welcome.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Like a good wife, I rescued from the flood and thoroughly washed my husband's old concert T-shirts. He's not very sentimental about them, and he wouldn't ever fit into them again, but I have this dream of cutting them up and making him a quilt out of them.

Anonymous said...

Are you telling me I should get rid of my Pointcast, Urban Fetch, Be and General Magic t-shirts? And my O'Reilly shirt for the first edition of the Perl book? Where's your sense of history???