Over the weekend while I was doing some last-minute shopping for Anime Midwest, I bought a three-pack of a-shirts anticipating that I would run out of undershirts for work next week. I was right and I ended up wearing one today at work.
A-shirts are those shirts without sleeves, colloquially known in the States as "wifebeaters." I was surprised when I first heard the real name, but the more I thought about it, it made more sense. Before that, though, my Filipino family referred to them as... sandos? I don't know how it's spelled, but that's what I remember it sounded like.
I mention this because as a child I wore a-shirts as undershirts frequently to school and one story that I am particularly fond of revolves around the fact.
It happened way back in elementary school. It was recess, and a bunch of kids (myself included) were outside in like a courtyard area. I'm not exactly sure what was happening, but I believe we were starting up a game or something.
Kids tend to pick on each other for perceived weird things, like having glasses or freckles or whatever; sometimes it's mean-spirited, sometimes it's in good fun. This one kid saw my undershirt's... shoulder parts? Regardless of the real name, from under a shirt it would look like straps of some sort, which is what this boy said.
"Are you wearing a bra?" he said, or something similiar, "You're wearing a bra!"
"It's not a bra!" I said, or something to that effect. I had never given these "sandos" a second thought while growing up; they just seemed normal to me. Then suddenly this dude starts making fun of it, but how did I deal with it? "They're like... jerseys, except you wear them underneath."
"Oh, okay," he said, or something like that, "Cool!" And that was the end of it.
Reading it on paper, it doesn't sound too amazing. I'm still proud of that moment, though. For a guy who regularly misses making witty remarks, it's nice to look back on that one moment of quick thinking.
A-shirts are cool,
Eric
A-shirts are those shirts without sleeves, colloquially known in the States as "wifebeaters." I was surprised when I first heard the real name, but the more I thought about it, it made more sense. Before that, though, my Filipino family referred to them as... sandos? I don't know how it's spelled, but that's what I remember it sounded like.
I mention this because as a child I wore a-shirts as undershirts frequently to school and one story that I am particularly fond of revolves around the fact.
It happened way back in elementary school. It was recess, and a bunch of kids (myself included) were outside in like a courtyard area. I'm not exactly sure what was happening, but I believe we were starting up a game or something.
Kids tend to pick on each other for perceived weird things, like having glasses or freckles or whatever; sometimes it's mean-spirited, sometimes it's in good fun. This one kid saw my undershirt's... shoulder parts? Regardless of the real name, from under a shirt it would look like straps of some sort, which is what this boy said.
"Are you wearing a bra?" he said, or something similiar, "You're wearing a bra!"
"It's not a bra!" I said, or something to that effect. I had never given these "sandos" a second thought while growing up; they just seemed normal to me. Then suddenly this dude starts making fun of it, but how did I deal with it? "They're like... jerseys, except you wear them underneath."
"Oh, okay," he said, or something like that, "Cool!" And that was the end of it.
Reading it on paper, it doesn't sound too amazing. I'm still proud of that moment, though. For a guy who regularly misses making witty remarks, it's nice to look back on that one moment of quick thinking.
A-shirts are cool,
Eric
Glad to finally learn that the sleeveless shirts that go underneath clothes are called "a-shirts". For the record, "sando" is the singular term for it.
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