World's Gayest T-shirt

The escalators at Flinders Street Station now seem to be my primary Human Folly Observation Point. I'm not sure whether this is because so many people use the escalators, or whether there is something about Flinders Street that makes people act oddly. Nevertheless, it is indubitably true.

Yesterday, as I was about to catch a train, I noticed a man (approximate age: 50) at the top of the escalator wearing a pink T-shirt. There's nothing unusual about that. Case closed.

Or is there?

The back of the man's pink t-shirt was decorated with a large love heart, including an arrow pointing to the wearer's right. Inside the heart were written the following words:

"I love this man with all my heart".

This meant, of course, that anyone standing next to Mr. Pink t-shirt wearer - willing or no - would be temporarily thrust into the shoes of his beloved.

I thought I was the only one who noticed the t-shirt. However, a man ahead of me (who was in a hurry) noticed it too. Although Hurrying Man desperately wanted to catch a train that was just about to leave the platform below, the only available position on the crowded escalator was the one right next to Mr. Pink t-shirt.

Hurrying Man, realising that he had just been forced to assume a position for which he considered himself unsuited, tried to diagonally push ahead of Mr. Pink to escape the t-shirt's accusatory motto. But his passage forward was blocked, and he was forced back beside his newfound true love.

Hurrying Man's next - and brilliant - move was to move backward. Although this would place him further away from the train, it would also put a dampener on the situation's incipient homoeroticism. But it was no good: by this stage, there were a bank of people behind Hurrying Man, preventing an easy escape from ManLove's granite-carved, accusatory message.

For the rest of the escalator trip (all this, miraculously, happened at lightning speed!), Hurrying Man assumed the posture of a laboratory rat in a cage who had suffered repeated electric shocks. That is, he demonstrated behaviour that Psychologists have termed 'learned helplessness' - the name given to the despondent and submissive behaviour that develops in lab rats after they realise there is nothing they can do to evade randomly-administered punishment.

I am not sure whether Pink T-shirt man was aware of all this, or whether he was completely oblivious. However, it was worth it to see Hurrying Man being hoisted out of his comfort zone for 15 delightful seconds.