When Louise came in wearing a The South Butt t-shirt and started talking to me as if of course I knew what The South Butt was, I was mostly confused. She explained things about lawsuits and August and the Post-Dispatch, and I smiled and nodded. But I got the joke and laughed at the word play, because, let's be honest, it may be a little crude, but it's my type of humor.
As it turned out, she had a greater purpose than highlighting my cultural ignorance. She had been in contact with Jimmy Winkelmann, who created The South Butt and had arranged for our kids to exchange dog treats for merchandise. He also was willing to give the kids a tour of the warehouse. In record time, my boss and I arranged a field trip. We piled into a shiny black SUV and went five minutes up the road.
We walked into what looked like a clothing storage facility. Various shirts, sweat-shirts, and pants, as well as other odds and ends floated in the room and corridors around a large conference table. We met Jimmy (who is only 19 and had big hair and eyes) and his father and god-father, who had helped the whole thing get started. Louise explained our venture, and the kids introduced themselves. We got to hear the story of how The South Butt started -- basically as a kitchen table, tongue-in-cheek kind of thing that took off when The North Face got upset and sued. Jimmy, like any college kid, loved the cookies that Louise had brought, and she poured offering after offering onto the table.
He took us downstairs to where the t-shirts, sweatshirts, and other branded paraphernalia dwelt. He told the kids to take whatever they liked and offered Louise, my boss, and myself anything we wanted as well. The kids had fun, and my 12 year old boy picked me out a pastel blue shirt, before I had the chance to ask the girl to do it. I also picked out a sweatshirt and t-shirt for Ana at my boss's suggestion.
Upstairs again, Jimmy took inventory of the spoils while his father talked a little bit to the kids about advertising versus publicity and a couple other pieces of business advice. The 6th graders latched onto this speech as the take-home message. The 8th grader picked up more on how close he and Jimmy were in age. Six years isn't that long, and he knew it. He saw possibility.
As a closing side note, I wore the sweatshirt out to an Ice Carnival today and discovered that I was a walking conversation piece. At least four different groups of people stopped me to ask about it. Apparently, it's popular as well as philanthropic to middle schoolers. Who knew?
is this your school??
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thesouthbutt.com/2010/01/19/the-south-butt-banned-in-st-louis-school/
No, it's not. We actually had a conversation about whether or not "butt" was too crude to bring to school, but decided the pros outweighed that vauge possibility. I'm still not sure what I think about it (they hear and say worse, yet we still should have high moral standards), but since we have uniforms, the kids can't wear it to school anyway.
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