cynicalI was at Aldi's the other day grocery shopping with my son. I was wearing a t-shirt for the anime Initial D. It was an Akagi RedSuns t-shirt featuring a white Mazda Savanna RX-7 and a yellow Mazda RX-7 Type-R. ((This picture isn't the exact shirt but it's very, very close, maybe a newer version of my shirt.)) I have a special place in my heart for Initial D and I love street racing, cars, and Japanese techno (weird, I know) so it's an all-around hit with me.
I get up to the counter and put my groceries on the belt. My son is in the cart seat smiling at the check-out girl and being adorable, like he does. My son, for the record, is seventeen months old and can't tell Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Winx Club. So the cashier is cooing at my son, who's flirting back with her, and she looks up at me.
"Oh, are you wearing that shirt for him?"
I was a little slow on the uptake, so I blinked and said, "...What?"
"Your shirt!" She points. "Are you wearing that because he likes cars?"
Granted, I'm not sure this was rude, it just struck me as patently absurd. I'm sure there are parents out there who wear Dora The Explorer t-shirts because their small children like Dora, but wouldn't it make more sense to get the shirt for the kid? I gave her sort of a confused look and said "This shirt is for Initial D, which is an anime *I* like that centers around downhill racing in Japan."
She returns my confused look with an equally baffled look and says, "Oh, well... he'll love cars when he gets older. All little boys do!"
My response was along the lines of "....uh-HUH."
Yep. Because I'm a woman, I can neither like nor know anything about cars. I must be wearing the shirt for my son, who would honestly rather I went around shirtless so he could motorboat my chest and nom my belly. *facepalm*