"Shirt-Worthy" review

In “Shirt-Worthy”, by David Giffels, Giffels describes how he earned a Ramones shirt. Giffels starts off saying that to respectfully get a Ramones shirt when he was a kid you had to go to a specifically good, chaotic concert and buy one there, but in todays time kids just go get one at a place like Hot Topic. Giffels earns his Ramones shirt when he buys his ten year old son a Ramones shirt for his birthday and his son ends up ripping it on a fence making it unwearable by the son. Giffels replaces his kids shirt with a new Ramones shirt and keeps the old one seeing this as a respectable way to get a Ramones shirt.

I felt that the essay was made for an audience of, not full blown punks, but more like a semi-punk or a “retired” punk. I say this because Giffels doesn’t go in depth in any real punk ideology except for wearing out of shirts, especially in his analogy concerning god and his illusion to the cookout where his son ripped the shirt because ideologies concerning gods and traits of conformity (cookout) weren’t very popular in older punk music. Although, as a punk or at the least a punk fan, I can relate to the importance of a worn out shirt to any real punk (I still wear shirts that have half foot long holes ripped in them from fist fights I was in over half a decade ago). Overall, Giffels story remained mostly relevant and was really easy to find something to connect to.

To me, the meaning of the story seemed clear that a ripped shirt symbolizing parenthood brings just as much honor as a shirt that was ripped in some crazy punk concert and that its not necessarily the wearing out of the shirt thats important but rather the memory and meaning that comes with it. I would have to say that his best rhetoric tools were his analogies, illusions, and his use of mild humor. The use of all of these makes an audience member feel somewhat connected to Giffels almost as if he is a well known acquaintance. When writing me memoir, I will try to include analogies, humor, and illusions as well as Giffels did. Conclusively, I enjoyed Giffels story about how he earned his Ramones shirt and his use of proper rhetoric in his paper, and the only thing I would have changed would have made it more geared towards more legitimate punks, but this is a personal preference and not necessarily one that made his essay any less enjoyable.