The other bald professor

Some shirts are sold as wrinkle-free.  Many.  It's so common that you don't really pay attention to it.  So you don't notice it when a shirt is not wrinkle-free.

Last year some time, my family went to the H&M, and I saw this shirt I liked.  It was cheap enough, so I bought two.  One light brown, and the other salmon. (Salmon, not pink, because I am a man.)

I wore one to work. I was all happy to be wearing my new shirt. And there is nothing more to say about that happy day.

The next time I went to wear that shirt, after washing it, not only did it have wrinkles, it had all the wrinkles.  Not only was it not wrinkle-free, this shirt was the wrinkliest.  I do not think it is fair that they don't have to put that on the label.  In fact, they shouldn't be allowed to iron the shirt before they display it in the store.  It should be washed and hung out there so the customer knows "This is what you are going to have to deal with every time you want to wear this damn shirt."

I don't wear those damn shirts so often.  But my shirt rotation isn't very deep, especially for cool spring days, so I decided to wear the salmon one today.  I iron it up. Not a hotel ironing, I don't need people knowing that I've ironed my shirt, I iron it up so it has just a casual dusting of wrinkles.

As I am taking Lisa to school, she asks, "Are you really wearing that pink shirt today, Daddy?"

"Are you worried that after I go to the gym, and take my shower, and towel off, that I will not have cooled down enough, and that after I dress I will continue sweating?  Are you worried that wet spots will soak through and people will see them and laugh at my shirt?"

I'm trying to work on Lisa's improvisational elaborations.  I'm trying to get her to come up with stories, to take an idea and run with it.  But she only ever says one-liners.

"People aren't going to laugh at your shirt, Daddy." she says, "They'll be laughing at your face."

Little shit.

I get to work after going to the gym.  I go to fill up my water bottle in the faculty room.  Professor Kim, the other bald professor in the math department, is there.  

Now, some people would say that he is older, so I am 'the other bald professor', but this is how a conversation between students would go.

Student 1: Hey, you know that bald professor?
Student 2: The foreigner?
Student 1: No, the other one.

So Professor Kim is the other bald professor.  He is smiling about something.  I ask "What's so funny? My pink shirt?"  

He brushes it off.  Then seeing the post-workout sweat forming on my head he asks, touching his own head "Why are you..."  he is looking for the word.  

"Bald?" I finish for him.  Chuckling, I answer his real question, "I just came from the gym."

He doesn't know what I said, but laughs and walks off to class.

This is how conversations go at work.  If we speak in Korean, my jokes never sound like jokes, and people usually just walk away confused.  If we speak English, they sound like banter, but no one can understand them, and people just walk away confused.

At least I have Lisa and Lucy to talk to.  Even if they only make fun of me.