Do You Know What Your Shirt Means?
Flashback Post - December 2010
One evening I was going to help the orphans with their English homework and had a classic China experience when I walked into House #2. House #2 is where the older boys live. They were diligently doing their homework and I noticed that Rob was wearing a pink shirt. For a boy to wear a pink shirt in China is nothing out of the ordinary, but what was on his shirt was anything but ordinary. As I read the bold typed English on his shirt I tried not to let my jaw hit the floor. I calmly asked Rob, "Do you know what your shirt means?" He pulled it away from his stomach and read it phonetically as best he could upside down. All of the other 7th and 8th grade boys in the room gathered around the spectacle of Rob's shirt and sounded out the words "Let's...get...busy...#*%&ing."
You have probably guessed that the symbols were not on the shirt but that those symbols represent that word which will most easily get one's mouth washed out with soap. The boys all then looked at me and said, "什么意思？ 我们没学过“ (What does that mean? We haven't studied that word). I then explained to them what the word meant and that it was the worst of the bad words in English. I did not think it would be right or appropriate to take the shirt off an orphans back. I also couldn't let him keep it because of the chance of him wearing it when guests came to visit (guests who know what it meant), so I offered him a trade. I took the shirt off of my back (Virginia is For Lovers), and traded him my shirt for his and we all got a good laugh out of it.
The boys and I would laugh every time Rob wore my Virginia is For Lovers shirt (which was quite often because Rob did not have an excess of shirts. The funny thing is that he bought it at the mall at a normal clothes store from a vendor who also had no idea what it meant. Maybe this should be lesson for all Americans who wear clothes with other languages on them or, even worse, have foreign languages tattooed on their bodies. I still have the shirt, I don't know why. It is in the bottom of my shirt drawer and everytime I see the pink fabric sticking out I chuckle.
One evening I was going to help the orphans with their English homework and had a classic China experience when I walked into House #2. House #2 is where the older boys live. They were diligently doing their homework and I noticed that Rob was wearing a pink shirt. For a boy to wear a pink shirt in China is nothing out of the ordinary, but what was on his shirt was anything but ordinary. As I read the bold typed English on his shirt I tried not to let my jaw hit the floor. I calmly asked Rob, "Do you know what your shirt means?" He pulled it away from his stomach and read it phonetically as best he could upside down. All of the other 7th and 8th grade boys in the room gathered around the spectacle of Rob's shirt and sounded out the words "Let's...get...busy...#*%&ing."
You have probably guessed that the symbols were not on the shirt but that those symbols represent that word which will most easily get one's mouth washed out with soap. The boys all then looked at me and said, "什么意思？ 我们没学过“ (What does that mean? We haven't studied that word). I then explained to them what the word meant and that it was the worst of the bad words in English. I did not think it would be right or appropriate to take the shirt off an orphans back. I also couldn't let him keep it because of the chance of him wearing it when guests came to visit (guests who know what it meant), so I offered him a trade. I took the shirt off of my back (Virginia is For Lovers), and traded him my shirt for his and we all got a good laugh out of it.
The boys and I would laugh every time Rob wore my Virginia is For Lovers shirt (which was quite often because Rob did not have an excess of shirts. The funny thing is that he bought it at the mall at a normal clothes store from a vendor who also had no idea what it meant. Maybe this should be lesson for all Americans who wear clothes with other languages on them or, even worse, have foreign languages tattooed on their bodies. I still have the shirt, I don't know why. It is in the bottom of my shirt drawer and everytime I see the pink fabric sticking out I chuckle.
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