Lunch sightings

I saw possibly the funniest thing I’ve seen all week today at lunch.

 

I’m walking to the magazine store and see a guy wearing a red warmup suit that says “Harvard Athletics” over the left breast.  That by itself is pretty funny, but that wasn’t it.

I think nothing of it mostly because Harvard is about a million miles away and it was probably just some guy wearing the Harvard gear to be funny (or stylish?), and Harvard athletics gear to be even funnier.  After all, he was shorter than me and white so he wasn’t here for any basketball tourney.

 

While I’m waiting on my burger, I see a kid wearing a “NCAA Athlete” sticker on top of a regular t-shirt.  I think “hm, maybe the Cougars are hosting the next round of the NIT.  I’ll have to see how Stanford did yesterday.”  He was also short and white, so I figured he would be a trainer or something like that.  Then I see a “Penn State” warmup jacket.  Then I see “Duke”.  Then I see “Yale”.  Then I see a couple of other “NCAA Athlete” stickers.  All are being worn by short white guys.

Then I see the “Rosetta Stone” that brings all this oddity into focus—a kid wearing a Notre Dame Fencing t-shirt. 

FENCING! 

No wonder they had to wear “NCAA Athlete” stickers.  Nobody would guess the short, white, ivy league smart guys were athletes.  Apparently there’s a fencing championship going on somewhere in town and all the kids descended on the Galleria for lunch.  If memory serves page c10 of the daily cage-liner has a story on it (page c10 also has the back end of a Richard Justice column about a UH Football great).

 

Bonus points if you can explain the origins of “Ivy League”.  Hint:  it has nothing to do with foliage.