Hawaiian Shirts… why and where they came from.
This story takes place in a movie theatre a bunch of years ago. I was watching a movie called Patch Adams. The movie reminded me a lot of myself and how I like to take care of others and make people laugh. The movie was about half over when I noticed something and it was that when ever Robin Williams would come into a new scene and he would have a Hawaiian shirt on it would make me smile. I started to think about it and I came up with a great idea. I was going to go home and throw all my shirts out and buy nothing but Hawaiian shirts. I thought that if it made me happy it would do the same for other people. It would make them happy and they would say something to me and it would give me a chance to talk with them. Well I decided to go to the mall and buy some shirts and my wife was still not convinced. She told me not to throw out my shirts until I knew that it was the right thing to do. She is always one step ahead of me, but this time I had a real cool feeling that this was going to be the start of something new. So at the mall I bought 3 really nice Hawaiian shirts and took them home. In the morning we were headed to San dieago so my wife could meet up with her parents. So in the morning we headed to the airport and I had my first very cool Hawaiian shirt on and it made me feel great. It was black and had pineapples all over it. We stopped off at a restaurant in San Jose, California on the way to the airport and while we were there I went to the mensroom and when I was walking out this mean looking biker about twice my size was coming towards me and I moved out of the way. He stared at me and I thought he was going to say something mean to me, but instead he said “hey nice shirt man” and I smiled and walked out. When I got back to my table I told my wife what just happened and she smiled and said maybe I was right. Well we got to the airport and got on the plane and while we were in the air one of the attendants came by and said “hey nice shirt” and I was kinda blown away. We landed and headed off to the hotel to meet up with Jane’s mom and dad. When we got there we were checking in at the hotel and the lady behind the counter looked up at us and smiled and said “hey nice shirt”. I was beside myself, because each time someone had said nice shirt I got a chance to engage into a small conversation with each one. In the morning jane and her dad were headed to a prison and her mom and I headed on the train to Mexico. When we got back we headed to old town san dieago for some Mexican food. We ate at a great restaurant and while we were seated someone walked by and said “nice shirt” and all excited I told Jane’s folks what was going on. After dinner we decided to go to a play that was in this real nice round theatre. The play was called forever plaid. The play was really fun and while the play was going on I noticed one of the guys in the play every now and then would look up our way. I thought he knew someone around us. We were about ¾ the way up the round in the theater. Very close to the top row. When there was a intermission the guys in the play were making adjustments to the stage and the one guy who kept looking up into the crowd was now putting up some poles with strings of lights on them. I saw him look up in out direction and all of a sudden he was coming up the stairs to the top of the auditorium and he stopped at the end of our row. I was convinced he was coming up to say hello to someone sitting by us and he started excusing himself to move in front of all the people in our row. When he finally got to us he looked down at me and said “hey man that’s a real nice shirt”. I was totally convinced that this was no coincidence. This was the final confirmation that I was to go home and throw all my shirts away and just buy all Hawaiian. I have since that day wore only Hawaiian shirts and have almost 300 to date. Hey “nice shirt” is music to my ears!