M is for the many ways we dis you

Once, we were walking in St. Louis, and we saw this microconfrontation unfold between a pedestrian in the crosswalk and the guy driving the convertible in front of which she was crossing.

The guy was really steamed because he had to wait while the woman crossed in front of his car. Now, if you’ve never been to St. Louis, you don’t know about this, but no one comes to a complete stop at intersections. Never. It isn’t done. Sure, people slow down; they slow down a lot. But they don’t stop.

So, while it might be a perfectly normal experience for drivers in other cities to find themselves in a stationary automobile at intersections once in a while (like when someone’s in the crosswalk in front of them), for St. Louis drivers it’s like WHAT THE EF. And this guy, he’s livid. Stopping at an intersection? Are you crazy? What next, he’s gonna be shunted onto a loop-de-loop detour? Nuh-uh. He’s not having it.

He cranes his neck up over his windshield so the lady can hear him, and he yells “yo MOMma!”

But she’s quick. She’s an advanced student of repartee. She knows the only rhetorical tactic there is that reverses this situation, uses her attacker’s own verbiage against him, and leaves him with no countermove to deploy in his own defense. With lightning speed, she parries. Convertible Guy’s last syllable is still on the way out of his throat as she shoots back:

“YO momma!”

And like that, it was finished.

Wear this shirt: when you hang out with your friends, and assert your social dominance by implied intimacy with their mothers. In their faces!

Don’t wear this shirt: when you visit your siblings. Or to your mom’s place either, because then it’s about your grandma, which, come on.

This shirt tells the world: “Who says T-shirts don’t have snaps?”

We call this color: Right Black At You

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