This is about a shirt. (If you were ever to skip one of my posts, this is the one.)
Click on the photo to see the shirt, on the Castle Trail at Badlands, South Dakota. (If you don't see a photo, visit Net Cotton Content here: tinyurl.com/GoodShirtMan.)
There are two ways to get this shirt.
#1: The first way is to inspire and train the greatest athletes, surgeons, or educators. Perhaps you coach executives, convening ambitious, effective, determined, successful entrepreneurs. Gathered in monthly peer groups, they shower each other with challenging questions, frank advice, shared experiences, and old-fashioned encouragement.
In the end, in deep gratitude for your work, they seek an appropriate gift. They buy you this shirt.
Or you can do what I did.
#2: I found it at homage.com and bought it. It tickled me. It seemed like good, clean tee-shirt irony.
But then I could not wear it.
When it arrived, I couldn't put it on. I thought: Who would wear such a shirt? Only someone who earned the shirt. This shirt cannot be self-inflicted by a fraudulent braggart. What a cry for help!
I feared that someone would say, "What did you do to earn that shirt?"
That's not what people say.
I stepped out of my house on the first wearing — right into my next door neighbor. He's a great coach of his and other people's children. And he knows that — while he is developing humans — I sit in my home and type. Like, er, a coach potato.
I'm smiling self-satisfied at having come up with the phrase, "coach potato." So I Googled it and found coachpotato.com.
Anyway, I pop out of my house into the sunshine and my neighbor says, "Hey! Coach of the Year!"
That is what everyone says.
"Hey! Coach of the Year!" They seem really happy about it, like they never met the coach of the year before. And, now, here is the coach of the year. In the flesh. In the shirt.
I had to come up with some response.
Here's what I say:
- "Oh, I just bought the shirt." Deadpan, shaking my head with self-loathing. People laugh. Then, "It's just a cry for help."
Then, I want to say (but haven't had the courage yet):
- "Drop and give me 20." I'd like to blow a whistle, but I am only realizing at this very moment that I must buy a whistle on chain. (Hey, homage.com. Got a whistle?)
I don't add this remark, because I'm not really sure what "Drop and give me 20" means. Of course, it has something to do with calisthenics. Push-ups or sit-ups.
But most common phrases end up as vulgar innuendo, so I'm afraid to say it because of what it might mean to Today's Youth. (Urban Dictionary says it's still wholesome for military use.)
Here goes nothing.
Dear Reader. Coach of the Year here. Drop and give me 20.