I remember standing there for several moments staring at the shirt displayed on the patch of grass just south of Davie Street, munching on my Sunday morning bagel, reading and re-reading the inscription. The daftly exuberant "A START!" The incongruous exhortation "THE GREAT THING TO MAKE" and the comprehensively incomprehensible "THE THAT IS THE 'ZONE.'" Evidently, someone had gone to the trouble of creating a passable graphic design and, with fearless chutzpah, produced god knows how many copies, without ever running the wording past a native English speaker.
I clamped the remains of the bagel in my mouth, extracted a loonie from my pocket and passed it to the transvestite junkie proprietor of the roadside boutique. I have worn the shirt with equal measures of pride and recurring bemusement every summer since.
