Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Day 2: The Shirt

In an airport far from home, my luggage arrived safely at baggage claim. I like to travel as light as possible, but always pack some basic personal hygiene items into my expandable laptop case. Ten people of different countries gather to retrieve their luggage as well. While I was patiently waiting, each of the ten notice that my laptop case is conspicuously expanded, and to themselves, try to guess what's inside. The unanimous answer is "shirt". It is assumed that everyone carries a clean shirt. It's part of good hygiene and if you want to avoid any chance of leaving a poor first impression, you'll have a clean shirt in your carry-on. Aside from the presumption that there must be a shirt in there, they go as far to guess the color, each guessing a different color, since they're from different parts of the globe. It is apparent that if they each guess a different color that at least nine of them will be wrong, possibly ten. Yet to boot, none of them have a good reason to believe that a shirt is in there to begin with. It's just what is familiar to them because of their culture, so they assume. I have a razor, shampoo, undergarments, and a toothbrush among other things, but no shirt. I wonder if they'll think I'm still a hygienic person without the shirt.

No comments:

Post a Comment