Judging Covers

You’ve probably heard that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. It’s a high ideal, but as anyone who has written a book knows, you better have a good cover for that baby.

It’s the same with people. We aren’t supposed to judge the contents of someone’s character based on how they dress, or how their hair is styled or the shoes they wear. Yet we do and still make judgements about someone’s character based on the number of piercings they have or whether they have a neck tattoo.

Each of us makes a decision every morning as we are getting ready to face life on how we will present ourselves to everyone in the world. Some of us are constrained by a dress code forced upon us by a boss or a school or our own need for acceptance. We say to ourselves that if only I had the balls to show the world exactly who I am. If we can’t go all the way, we can at least give subtle signs designed as a recognition signal to other members of our tribes.

I like looking for those signs. As someone who likes to write fiction, I’m always looking for the ways to describe characters and I will mentally write a sentence of description when I encounter someone. I appreciate the effort that goes into the way we present ourselves. Recently, while walking to the bathroom in the building in which I work, I found myself approaching a fellow no older than 25 walking toward me wearing a Sub Pop Records T-shirt.

To an extent, I feel that it is ridiculous to have to explain what Sub Pop Records was – a part of me thinks that if you don’t know, then you clearly are not a part of the tribe. However, understanding has to be created so we can move forward. If you don’t know Sub Pop, then you weren’t one of the kids in the know in the early 1990s. In a way, I can raise my nose in superiority and sniff something about you not being cool, but that’s not my style. What do I know what is cool? Sub Pop, if you didn’t know, was the record company that first signed Nirvana in 1988. It also had signed Soundgarden and Mudhoney and a host of other bands responsible for grunge. I’ll assume that everyone is familiar with grunge and its rise and fall.

By 1996, Sub Pop had sold out to Warner Brothers and eventually fell apart, becoming only a nostalgic representative of a scene that had moved on nearly 30 years ago. It is a relic.

To see a Sub Pop T-shirt being worn by a fellow who wasn’t born at the time it was a thing brought up several emotions. Enough, I would say, to spend time writing about it. I know more than a few of my similarly aged peers who would see this Hot Topic rip-off T-shirt as an insult. “How dare they wear something they know nothing about?”

I’m not one of those guys, I’ve been hearing Baby Boomers pointing out my whole life that I could know the “true” experience about liking a band or a movie or a car or whatever because I wasn’t there, I didn’t know. While I would never wear a knock-off T-shirt from a concert tour I once attended, I have no problem with someone else doing so. I don’t know about anyone else, but I pretty much destroyed the concert Tees I had through continual wear, so to see them again on someone a third my age gives me a warm feeling.

My first thought about the guy with the Sub Pop shirt was, honestly, that he must have a pretty cool mom and dad who played some pretty cool music for him when he was a tyke. Or maybe he just raided their record collections and discovered things on his own.

Our first experience with music comes from what we hear at home during our toddlerhood. At that age, you are a trapped audience with no choice but to listen to whatever is around the house. My folks, in my youth, were pretty much into the adult contemporary music of the 1970s. So yeah, I’m pretty familiar with the sound stylings of Gordon Lightfoot, Helen Reddy, Dionne Warwick, and that ilk. I’m also very familiar with the records my folks listened to when they were teenagers. My dad’s records were still very much around and we would spend hours listening to those old 45s on a record player in our room. That’s why I know and can sing along with songs by Johnny Horton, The Crewcuts, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and, of course, Elvis. These days I can’t remember where I put my keys, but I know all the words to “The Battle of New Orleans.”

As a young man, if I could have found one, I certainly would have worn a Sun Records T-shirt.

These days, I don’t go much for wearing concert T-shirts. Instead, I tend to favor shirts from places I’ve visited or from things that are so obscure that only a few other people in the general public will know what the hell it is that I’m a fan of. For instance, I have a brown T-shirt with some artwork and the words, “I aim to misbehave” on it that shows I am a fan of the old TV show “Firefly.” If you are a fan, then you understand. In fact, I encounter folks every now and then that will point out our similar tribal membership. It’s sometimes nice to meet fellow travelers.

In the movie “High Fidelity,” John Cusack’s character Rob sums up the importance of these seemingly superficial things like concert T-shirts with “what matters is what you like, not what you are like.” In a couple of words, he’s pointing out the short cut we all use to convey our character to the world through what we enjoy.

It’s possible that the young man I encountered was wearing the Sup Pop T-shirt in an ironic manner, subtly making fun of me and my generation. Even if he was, that is perfectly fine because deep inside of ever member of Generation X is a fine appreciation for irony. We also appreciate anyone who likes the things we like.

I know that when the young guy saw me he saw a middle-aged guy with too much weight, wrinkles and gray hair. Very easy to dismiss as irrelevant. But I used the code phrase to let him know I saw and acknowledged part of his character.

“I like your shirt,” I said, knowing that he had probably spent most of the morning explaining his gear to people who would never understand.

He smiled and said “thanks” and we moved on, members of the same tribe bonding in a little under a minute over a T-shirt, both of us understanding its meaning.

Regardless of what you hear, it’s fine to judge a book by its cover, just make sure to read the damn thing.