The other day, I noticed a kid at the boys school wearing a shirt with two pandas on the front. Not cartoony pandas. They were serious pandas, like photographs. He was leaning his back up against a tree with his long skinny twelve year old legs crossed as he watched other kids run around with each other. He was wearing basic jeans, basic black hightops, basic black sunglasses with a neoprene leash attached, and his deep red serious panda shirt. To me, he stood out among the Old Navy, Element, Gap, Volcom, t-shirt kids. A non-conformist. But not the sort of non-comformist who conforms to a group of non-comformists. He made me think of Toby from Jr. High. Toby always wore serious wolf shirts. Toby was a non-conformist too. He walked fast down the halls between classes. REALLY FAST, like was on the last leg of a power walking race, his expression more serious than the wolf on his shirt. I never saw him doing anything thing else except “Tobe-ing” down the halls. I thought I’d wow my pals and earn a chuckle one time when I walked across his path on his way to class. BAM, I landed on a resin floor installed by resin floor specialists. He slammed into me like a car crashing through a barracade in an action movie. He didn’t even use his arms, just shoved me out of the way with the velocity of his torso barreling down the hall and never blinked an eye. My friends thought is was the funniest thing they had ever seen. Inside, I felt sort of bad for being an ass and, in a wierd way, I secretly admired him. Not for his social skills but for wearing serious wolf shirts when everybody else sported Hyper Color and IOU shirts. I like animal shirts, have quite a few, but they aren’t serious animal shirts. There is a BIG difference. Maybe serious animal shirts will become the next identity of a new subculture. I wonder what sort of music the serious animal shirt group would listen to? I wonder where Toby is now?