My new t-shirt arrived while I was visiting my dad (and attending the first Finnish nerdfighter gathering ever) across the country, so it was my mother who would open the package. What she discovered positively appalled her and she called me, saying how a horrible red shirt had arrived, a shirt that says pizza on it. I chuckled and said “With the picture of a creepy-looking guy on it?”, knowing that she was probably even more horrified by that than anything else on that shirt. She proceeded to describe how the man’s face on it “looks like some sort of a terrorist with horrible moustache!”. Needless to say, I laughed a lot when she described the shirt. I assured her that it was all related to a joke, which seemed to lessen the blow, slightly.

When I came back home, I put on the shirt and mom kept glaring at it with a half-amused half oh-my-god-what-the-hell-are-you-wearing expression. I then explained that the man on the shirt is an author, not a terrorist (that I know of) and that he usually doesn’t come with a creepy moustache. I also told the tale of John’s weight struggles and how the wonderful people on the internet started posting every picture of him eating that they could find, and how that essentially was how this shirt came to be. Mom laughed and her initial horror seemed to subside more or less.

Then I showed her the video where John speaks about the John Green Is Fat Facebook group and expresses that he wants the Pizza-image as a shirt. I think that my mother fell in love with John’s hair. She found it to be adorable how it kept changing after every jump-cut. I explained to her the concept of John’s puff levels but she was paying more attention to the shiny video (his hair might have hypnotic powers…we need to look into it, everyone!). She was amused by it. I now suspect that if she was a bit better at English, I could possibly turn her into a nerdfighter…with John’s hair.

I think John’s puffy hair now makes it okay for me to own a horrible shirt that says PIZZA on it.