Kiara was at big band practice, where she had of course broken out photos of the boy. One guy peered closely at a picture. “That’s his first bath,” Kiara offered helpfully.

“Yeah…” He squinted at the picture for a while longer. “Is Sam a programmer?”

When I heard this, I was dying to see what picture had led him to this conclusion. I didn’t think I had a Perl shirt on in any of them. Maybe an Apple shirt? Nah, that’d just peg me as a Mac user. Maybe that MySQL shirt…that would still be weird, though, why would he assume programmer?

Then I found it.

If this were TV, here’s where the camera would quickly back off to the house, then the city, then the country, then the planet, all while my screams echoed through the galaxy.

In the photo, I am wearing a Visual Basic .NET t-shirt.

Go ahead, Matt, chortle.

Why would I wear such a thing? Two words: free clothes. And I’m not the language bigot you might make me out to be.

It’s really funny the reactions I get to the shirt when I work up the courage to wear it in public. No one’s actually come up to me and tried to start a conversation, as has happened when I’ve worn Perl gear or an Apple shirt, but they do stare. Aghast, I assume. ;-)