Why? I'm not sure.

So I really like this band called Why?, so much so that I decided to buy one of their nicely designed t-shirts a couple of years back. The problem is, it's kind of a dark t-shirt, not in color but in content. Two little girls at the bottom are crying and screaming, "WHY?!?!" and a lyric from one of my favorite songs is printed around the hem: "cold and hard as a marble table top with nothing on top."

Favorite song on the album, but not my favorite lyric, not particularly meaningful. I much prefer the sheer sound of the lyrics immediately following: "there's no hip-hip-hop hooray guarding Heaven's golden-barbed gateway, no bright confetti high-step march ticker-tape parade."

It's a song about death, and so, I guess the lyric on my shirt is actually describing a dead body.

Ok, and now the more I actually talk about it, the weirder it gets.

And I could try to make up a reason why I like the song or like the lyrics, something about man's finite-ness and the immanence of death, and I would halfway mean those things. But really, the lyrics themselves are probably debatable and in the end truth is, I just like the band, I like the song, I like the color of the shirt.

But the reason I'm saying all this is to describe that it's a bit awkward for me to try and explain to people who ask about it.

Today a woman much older than me whom I greatly respect saw me in town and asked. I stuttered and fumbled and didn't explain any of the things I just did explain, but rather more or less shrugged it off in a "Kids these days wear the weirdest things" sort of way.

Her response was priceless: "Well, if I see it in a crossword puzzle, now I'll know."