M 

y dad shows his love 
through gifting t-shirts.

It doesn’t matter the 

occasion or the time of year or the 
person receiving it — the man does it 
out of pure joy. Because of this obses-
sion, it would seem rather intuitive 
that his go-to holiday presents are t-
shirts galore, from the “Don’t speak 
to me before my coffee” shirt for my 
mother to the “Michigan Grandpa” 
shirts for his father.

My dad’s knack for gifting t-shirts 

kicked off 15 or so years ago, at the 
height of March Madness with his 
best friend Scott. The two met when 
they were 18-year-old students at 
the University of Michigan, living 
as freshmen in Alice Lloyd, and they 
quickly grew close when they rushed 
a fraternity together. The two lived 
together for the rest of their college 
careers and eventually moved to the 
same New York City suburb of Mill-
burn, N.J. They were, and still are, an 
inseparable pair who love to create 
fun in any situation, no matter the 
circumstance. 

Through the years, with a love of 

sports and a passion for adrenaline, 
Scott and my dad had done their fair 
share of casual sports betting. So ev-
ery year when March rolled around, 
they both cashed into a handful of 
leagues with numerous potential 
brackets on their side. After some 
time, that tradition became boring 
and repetitive. They no longer got a 
kick out of just cheering for Michi-
gan or winning a few bucks here and 
there. My dad and Scott needed to 
do what they did best: Make some-
thing out of what had become not so 
much.

Something to note about March 

Madness is that there are always a 
handful of lesser-known teams that 
emerge out of the shadows as forces 
to be reckoned with. They’re the 
upset teams, the Cinderella stories, 
the “Who beat Duke?!” soundbites. 

They’re the schools my dad and 
Scott loved to occasionally place wa-
gers on saying they’d go far, but their 
fun usually ended there. But then 
they found the perfect way to spice 
things up: Become dedicated fans 
of these underdog teams. And what 
better way to become a dedicated fan 
than by purchasing the team’s appar-
el for one another?

This was the early 2000s, and 

the internet wasn’t the mass-mar-
ketplace that it is today. My dad and 
Scott had to physically pay a visit to 
the smaller universities whenever 
they had the chance just to secure a 
t-shirt. For example, when my dad 
took a business trip to Nashville, 
Tenn., he made a point to stop by 
Belmont to get Scott a Bruins short 
sleeve. He did the same with Florida 
Gulf Coast when he went on vaca-
tion in Naples, Fla. 

And with that, a tradition was 

born. A small tradition that, with the 
help of the internet, became larger, 
more accessible and undoubtedly 
significant with the years to come. 
Since the pair began this ritual, they 
extended the limitations to shirts 
with famous movie quotes on them, 
and individually have collected and 
gifted over 50 t-shirts for the other 
(all of which they wear). 

The action of gifting Scott the 

perfect short sleeve tee gave my dad 
so much satisfaction that it began 
to carry over to other significant re-
lationships in his life. After every 
business trip, concert or outing, my 
dad returned home with a shirt for 
each member of my family, allowing 
us all to start collections of our own. 
Because of him, I now have a pile 
full of obscure Grateful Dead tees, a 
Longhorns sleep shirt and a Breck-
enridge v-neck, among others. I also 
now have an extremely sentimental 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg dancing bear 
shirt — a gift that was sent to comfort 
me and commemorate her after she 

passed. Most recently, a shirt with 
cartoon drawings of my beloved dogs 
was added to my collection, which I 
received following an anxiety attack 
that occurred on the phone with 
him. With each package came yet 
another reminder that he loved me, 
was thinking of me and was here for 
me whenever, through whatever. 

I’ve only bought a t-shirt as a gift 

for someone a few times in my life, 
with my dad being the primary re-
ceiver. But even so, gift-giving has 
never exactly been my strong suit. 
I never know what to get, where to 
get it or what I’m even looking for. 
I’m much better at showing my love 
through articulating my emotions 
rather than offering a tangible sym-
bol of it. Birthday cards and love let-
ters take me only minutes to write, 
and when I feel something strong 
enough, I feel compelled to verbalize 
it in whatever capacity I see fit. I of-
ten don’t take vulnerability into con-
sideration — I see words as my ar-
mor and verbal support as my form 
of expression. 

I show my love by explicitly tell-

ing people I need them, I care about 
them, I’d give anything in the world 
just to spend time with them. This is a 
drastically different experience than 
gifting t-shirts. But then again, peo-
ple often have radically different and 
niche ways of expressing their love. 
This phenomenon is so persistent in 
society that in 1992, the author Gary 
Chapman created a theory explain-
ing these differences in a book titled 
“The Five Love Languages”. Chap-
man theorizes that each member in 
a relationship — romantic, platonic 
or familial — offer love in the way 
they want to receive it, with actions 
falling into one of five so-called “lan-
guages”: physical touch, quality time, 
acts of service, words of affirmation 
and receiving gifts. 

The book ended up gaining more 

attention than anticipated, with 

over 13 million copies sold world-
wide and a spot on The New York 
Times’ best seller list since 2007. 
Chapman’s theory of love languages 
has received a significant amount 
of praise from major media orga-
nizations and the general public, 
becoming a common phrase in ev-
eryday conversation. The amount 
of positive feedback and success 
stories from reading the book 
makes it evident that Chapman’s 
theory has at least some truth to 
it. And though I admit I have nev-
er read the book myself, I see his 
general ideas play out in my every-
day life.

However, I didn’t consciously buy 

into the idea of love languages for a 
while — and that was a problem. 

Because I have always been so 

vocal with my feelings, I saw others 
staying silent about theirs as a sign 
of dislike or mistrust. I desperately 
wanted my friends, family or signifi-
cant others to not only tell me how 
they felt, but to shout it from the 
rooftops. I needed to hear a confir-
mation that our relationship was real 
because in my eyes without that ar-
ticulation, it wasn’t. 

As I write this now, I am further 

reminded of how backwards and 
toxic that train of thought can be. I 
failed to recognize that some peo-
ple have a harder time speaking in 
a vulnerable capacity than others, 
and that some people avoid it all to-
gether. But this absence of explicit 
language doesn’t necessarily equate 
to an absence of love — it just indi-
cates that they have a different way 
of expressing it, a different love lan-
guage. My perspective on relation-
ships, kindness and care changed 
significantly once I took a step back 
and recognized that. 

The intricate fabrics of love

BY ANDIE HOROWITZ, STATEMENT MANAGING EDITOR

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement
Wednesday, February 10th, 2021 — 5A

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

