As I was walking down the sunny Melbourne streets I saw three young women walking towards me. They were all wearing those T-shirts with outrageous/provocative phrases on them that are currently in vogue.
The girl on the left's T-shirt read "Don't Tempt Me!", an instruction which I think I managed to comply with extremely effectively as she didn't even notice me. It was good to have given her what she wanted.
The second girl's slogan interested me more. It read "I have an attitude!"
Two things struck me about this. Firstly, people who have an attitude don't need to advertise the fact on a T-shirt. If you have an attitude then you let that attitude speak for itself. If you have to given people a written indication of your attitude, then your attitude is not working properly. People who wear a T-shirt saying "I have an attitude!" are actually saying "I would like to have an attitude, but I am not interesting enough to have one, so instead I've got a T-shirt."
Secondly, in a sense we've all got an attitude, haven't we? If you're shy or friendly or polite then that is still an attitude. Again, she might as well just have had a T-shirt saying "I am a human being". If she meant a bad attitude then she should have got a T-shirt saying that. Though again, if she had a bad attitude she wouldn't need to advertise it. The T-shirt should have read "I would like it if you thought I had a bad attitude, because that would make me appear interesting and exciting, rather than a slightly sad figure who is desperate for attention".
Maybe I could market a line of T-shirts for people like this woman simply reading "Idiot. Please avoid. Unless you are also an idiot. In which case, let's be friends."
Although there are so many kinds of idiot in the world that you might need to say "I am the kind of idiot who would wear a T-shirt saying "I have an attitude!" If you are a similar idiot, or think that someone wearing that kind of T-shirt is cool and sassy (even though in reality they are clearly an idiot) then talk to me and we may become friends."
This might be a bit involved. I guess the "I have an attitude" T-shirt is already doing this job rather effectively.
