I thought for sure I had seen the last of the Shorts Guys in undergrad. They were a rare breed even then, and you always had the feeling that as soon as they were no longer in an environment where everyone noticed them, they’d quietly slip back into a pair of jeans and a sweater, much like the rest of us normal people. We had a couple classic Shorts Guys in undergrad; one in particular embodied every badass stereotype there is about these guys. He was some white trash buddy of a friend of ours who would park at our place and get tanked before hockey games (we lived across from the ice rink). Throughout the winter in Michigan, you can probably expect that there’s a snow cover of at least a few inches. And the temperature in the evening rarely gets above freezing. It’s fucking miserable.
So anyway, prior to hockey games we’d generally sit outside on our porch, chugging beers and puffing cigs to stay warm and get ready for the game. You wore a thick coat, and usually gloves. But not shorts guy. Shorts guy stood outside for hours at a time in nothing but of course, shorts and a t-shirt. It didn’t matter how cold it got, how windy it was, or how hard it was snowing – wearing adequate clothing was for pussies. I’m pretty sure the whole point of his existence was waiting for that inevitable moment when someone would ask “aren’t you cold?” just so he could stare them dead in the face and say “shit no. It feels great out here.”
“You think it’s cold out here? Fag.”
There was another shorts guy who was kind of a mini-celeb on campus. He was an extremely fat guy who seemed to only come out when the temperature dropped below 20. Maybe that’s why he only wore shorts; he didn’t get outside enough in his life to realize temperature and weather differences? If you only come outside on 20 degree days, do you have any relative idea as to what cold actually is? Maybe that just seemed normal to him? Anyhow, one particularly shitty winter day I was walking through the Diag when I came across this fine specimen, walking to class in nothing but, what else, shorts and a t-shirt. He even took it to the next level by sporting flip-flops. His skin was covered in red splotches from the cold, and his faced looked half-albino, half third-degree burn. He looked like a fat AIDS patient. But he didn’t give a shit; he just wanted you to know that he was totally fucking comfortable in this kind of weather (he was also the type of guy who would probably tell you some bullshit like “I’m from Manitoba – this feels like summer!”)
Like I mentioned earlier, I thought for sure though that this species pretty much withered away after undergrad, when people stopped looking at Shorts Guy and asking “what the fuck is wrong with that guy?” and started saying “alright, clearly this guy isn’t fit to be a productive member of society.” But lo and behold, when I got to class today, there he was in all his glory; Shorts Guy! It was probably about 30 degrees here in DC this morning; not exceedingly cold by any means, but cold enough for most people (those with a pulse) to wear pants and a jacket of some sort. Maybe he didn’t check the weather this morning, or just hasn’t seen a calendar in a few months, or maybe he’s just too fucking badass to have his wardrobe constricted by weather conditions? After seeing that shorts guy can indeed survive far beyond undergrad, I’m convinced that next to the cockroach, the shorts guy species is probably the second most likely to survive either a nuclear holocaust or an ice age. I have a feeling they’re going to get the last laugh – or at least that’s what they keep telling themselves as they catch hypothermia every winter in the name of stupidity. For right now anyway I’m just glad to have spotted this rare specimen; global warming’s got nothing on these guys.
