We'll do anything for a free T-shirt
LeBron got a t-shirt. Did you? (AP)
On Tuesday against the Denver Nuggets, down by a point with less than a second remaining, the Bulls' Kirk Hinrich inbounded the ball to Brad Miller, who immediately hit a basket from the top of the key. But not immediately enough, as the refs, upon review, ruled the shot had come after the buzzer--and the Bulls lost.
Still, until Miller hit his shot and a Bulls victory seemed certain, I had never witnessed, in person, a United Center crowd so loud, so jubilant, so alive.
Unless, of course, you count a half-hour prior to that, when the guy with the T-shirt gun approached our section.
That's when everybody really raised the roof.
There are a lot of serious problems--political, economic, societal--in this country, but I fear none of them have much chance of being solved so long as much of our citizenry goes absolutely bonkers at the remote chance that a T-shirt gun, armed with a cheaply produced T-shirt emblazoned with a corporate logo, aims its contents directly at them.
At the United Center, there's also the T-shirt Guy. He stands between two sections, holds out a T-shirt and waits as each section--all eyes fixed on that T-shirt--attempts to scream the loudest. This happens during the game. If there's a timeout, the T-shirt Guy must pause, so we can watch another promotion on the scoreboard.
The T-shirt Guy smiles a lot, and I'm confident he's been sent by aliens with superior intelligence as well as competent T-shirt-making skills to assess how easy it'll be to conquer our planet.
The guy behind me actually caught a T-shirt. We were all quite happy for him. The scene was reminiscent of that photo of the Times Square World War II victory celebration in which a nurse and sailor are kissing.
Bulls fans certainly aren't the only ones who treat a free T-shirt the way we used to treat things like, I don't know, getting accepted to a good college or having a baby. It happens at credit-card sign-up booths and bar promotion nights. And, oh, does it happen at promotional movie screenings. I can tell you from personal experience that several lucky people currently are walking the streets with a real nifty "Operation Dumbo Drop" T-shirt in their wardrobe.
I like T-shirts. I like how you can wear them when you need to put something on. And I like free things.
But as we stand at the United Center and scream, "Over here! Over here! I hope it's 100 percent cotton!," someone--if not aliens, then someone worse--has got to be watching and thinking, "Damn, these people are free for the taking."
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