When I was attending U of T, I often fell asleep on the subway, due to insomnia during the previous night. I often missed my stop, ending up at Kipling station, and having to ride back in the other direction. During this time it occurred to me–since I was always sleeping forward, slumped over on my backpack–to make a shirt that said “Wake Me Up at St. George Station,” which, even if it wasn’t a practical solution, would add some levity to my predicament. I didn’t get around to it until many years out of school, but I did eventually make it.

When I posted it on Reddit, the shirt rose to the top of r/Toronto and was mentioned on several radio stations’ feeds, including Indie88 and Virgin. The CBC posted a regional news article about it. Of course, none of these outlets made any attempt to contact me; they just filled it out by extrapolating from the sparse captions I’d given the images–almost writing as if they’d talked to me. It makes you think about the rest of the stories you read in the paper, and how often the primary source is just a bit of listless Redditing.