I’d like to do something a little odd. I’d like to explain why I always have my shirt untucked at school. I’m about to graduate, I don’t have much to lose in speaking plainly with you people, so I’m going to do it.
No doubt, you people have wondered why it’s necessary to tell me eight or nine times a week, “Trent, tuck in your shirt.” You must complain about it in the breakroom. One of you probably says something like, “I had to remind Trent to tuck in his shirt again today,” and then someone else says, “So did I,” and a third says, “Me, too!” You probably stand around shaking your heads, wondering how anyone can need so many reminders to tuck in his shirt. It’s baffling, isn’t it? Well, I’d like to tell you why I need so many reminders. I probably shouldn’t do this, and it’s probably a betrayal of my own kind to do it, but I’m going to tell you why you have to keep reminding me to tuck in my shirt. It’s because you morons never do anything about it.
“You morons” might seem a little harsh, I know, but I’m giving you people good intel here and it’s a fair trade.
First things first, though. When you people “remind” me to tuck in my shirt, you’re not reminding me to do anything. I don’t know why you people use that word. I don’t forget. I never forget. I always know when my shirt is untucked. And that’s true for everyone who needs all those “reminders.”
Me and my friends have debated why you use the word “remind” when it comes to the dress code. You always say, “Don’t forget to tuck in your shirt,” and “Don’t make me remind you to tuck in your shirt again.” Here’s the thing, though: you people know that I haven’t forgotten. I didn’t realize that until my sophomore year, but it made me look at the situation differently. You were making excuses for me. You were upset with me, but you were still making excuses for me.
There are plenty of rules at this school which nobody enforces. There are rules which are technically on the books but nobody cares about them. Of course, there are also rules which are strictly enforced. The rule about tucked shirts is odd, though. Teachers care enough about the rule to comment on it when we’re breaking it, but they don’t care enough to actually do anything about it. At least, that’s what I thought at first. Then in my junior year, I had another breakthrough. It’s not that you don’t want to do anything about untucked shirts. It’s that you can’t. You’re not allowed to do anything about it.
And that’s why you claim it’s about “forgetting” the rule.
I guess you people think that someone who “forgets” the rules doesn’t actually need any real punishment. If it’s an honest mistake, you don’t really have to do anything about it. Here’s the thing, though: you people can pretend like it’s a matter of forgetting, but even when I intentionally broke the dress code, I don’t think there would be any real consequences.
What’s weird is that you people do actually know how to enforce a dress code. I’ve seen you do it. The whole world has seen you enforce a dress code. Remember COVID? You made us wear masks. We all had to wear masks—no forgetting allowed. Man, you people were total Nazis about those masks. We learned that quick. If a kid entered a building and he wasn’t wearing a mask, you’d nail him on the spot. Forgetting wasn’t allowed. Forgetting had consequences. And you made us wear the masks properly. If some kid was wearing his mask around his chin, you’d get him. You were serious. You meant business. There were real penalties for breaking those rules. So, let’s be honest: you know how to enforce a dress code if you really want to. If there were COVID-level penalties for untucked shirts, we’d tuck them in all the time. It’d be a cold habit in three days. If there were any real penalties for untucked shirts, we’d tuck them in. But there’s not.
If you want to know why I always have my shirt untucked, I don’t mind explaining it. It’s not because you made a rule against it. It’s not rebellion for the sake of rebellion. It’s just more comfortable that way, and I prefer the look of an untucked shirt to one that’s tucked in. Surely you can understand that. I don’t do it to insult you. I know you feel insulted when we break the rule, you feel we’re thumbing our noses at you, but the insult is only a byproduct. Granted, I don’t respect you enough to care that you feel insulted by what I do, but you shouldn’t take it personally.
Honestly, making us tuck in our shirts seems like a dumb rule. It’s not doing you people any good. Like I said, you care enough to constantly remind us about our shirts, but you don’t care enough to actually do anything about it when we break the rule. For that reason, the rule is dumb. You don’t really enforce it. You ask. You plead. You make little jokes about how much better a tucked-in shirt looks. You’re practically reduced to begging, though. You ask us to tuck them in, we comply for around ten minutes, then as soon as we’re around the corner, we untuck them again and laugh. You catch us again, we comply for a few more minutes, then lather, rinse, repeat. It’s a charade. It’s a game. It’s a game you morons are happy to play all year.
From a certain standpoint, tucked shirts aren’t that big of a deal. It’s not like world peace was about to be established but a couple kids in Wisconsin kept breaking the dress code so we’re getting World War III, instead. At the same time, the whole untucked shirt thing does actually make you all seem pretty ridiculous—and I’ll bet that there are some real, long-term consequences for students thinking of their teachers as impotent scolds who are incapable of actually demanding obedience. Because here’s the thing about an untucked shirt: sure, it’s a little thing—but it’s a little thing done in the open. That’s why it matters. When I say, “it’s a little thing,” I mean that it’s not as bad as cheating on a test or looking at porn on your phone in the boy’s bathroom. It’s not like sneaking on campus in the middle of the night and defacing school property. It’s not taking your girlfriend to a dark corner of the basement while everyone else is eating their lunch on the lawn. But those are all things that you hide. They’re defiant, but they’re not openly defiant.
Walking around with your shirt untucked is just so obvious. Technically it’s a small thing, but it’s actually kind of a big deal because of just how openly defiant it is. And when you pair that with the obviously fake excuse of having “forgotten” to obey, it just makes you people look so helpless. It makes your authority seem fake. There are times when you tell me to tuck in my shirt and I’m tempted to say, “Make me,” not to be a jerk, but because I’m genuinely curious about what you’d do. Based on everything I’ve seen from you people in the past, I don’t actually think you’d even try. I think you’d just mumble something and walk away. At worst, I’d get a sermon.
I’m probably not going to send my kids to a school like this in the future, but if I did, I’d want to know if students really had to tuck in their shirts. It would tell me a lot, actually. I don’t read the Bible much, but I think that one guy was on to something when he said that people who take care of little things take care of big things, too.
