I’d like to share with you a sincere and cherished belief of mine. I believe that wearing a red t-shirt has the power to heal the sick and bring good fortune.

I believe this because my grandmother had terminal cancer, but one day I went to see her wearing a red t-shirt and the doctors informed me that the cancer had went into remission! The doctors, each with years upon years of study and testing in the field of medicine, could not explain it, which gives me, the person without the history of scholastic rigor in the field, license to put forward my best explanation. I think it can be explained by the color of my t-shirt.

You’re probably going to say that my mother was wearing a green dress; that dad wore a baseball cap, or that my little brother mumbled some magic words, but those things don’t make any sense as explanations for my grandmother’s healed cancer and nobody’s claiming them as an explanation. Try to be a little more open-minded and logical.

I received confirmation of this theory when I was $500 behind on bills after losing my job (a job at which, now that I think about it, I often wore a red t-shirt). However, right before I was about to give up I discovered a bank error in my favor for $623!!! The color of the t-shirt I was wearing at the time? You guessed it: red. Try and chalk that up to coincidence.

You may be tempted to say here that lots of people wear red t-shirts and their cancer-ridden relatives still die. I’m honestly not sure why this is, but it probably has something to do with the tone of their shirts – they’re probably not red enough. Or you may be moved to point out that cancer sometimes goes into remission without explanation for people wearing blue t-shirts, orange t-shirts, red t-shirts, or even no shirt at all! But why would my grandmother’s cancer go into remission on the day that I was wearing a red t-shirt? The doctors couldn’t explain it, and I just can’t believe it was a coincidence (or that it was the outlying positive outcome amongst several negative outcomes that occurred while I was wearing a red t-shirt), which means that I can explain it!

But weren’t you wearing a red t-shirt off and on the previous six months without the cancer going into remission, I can hear you asking. Yes, but the efficacy of the red t-shirt was building up over that time.

You may also say that red shirts didn’t work out so well for Star Trek characters but 1) they were fictional, my grandmother is not and 2) those were not t-shirts, just look at the sleeves!

You may also “hypothesize” that if people just wore red t-shirts around sick people that a lot of them would probably die from easily curable conditions. But I’m not saying people should only wear a red t-shirt. They should wear the red t-shirt and take their afflicted loved ones to the doctor. You have to take the thing that doesn’t seem to work on its own and combine it with approach that does work on its own to get the full effect. The t-shirt is not only an assist to medical professionals, it kicks into gear whenever something happens that the professionals cannot explain – like my grandmother’s cancer going into remission.

I realize that a lot of people will find this idea overpowering, which is why they reject it. They probably aren’t ready to handle the overwhelming truth of it all, or they’re scared because they don’t have an explanation for this phenomenon, the occurrence of which they must take my word for since they are unable to investigate it for themselves. Either that or they just hate red t-shirts and don’t want their own relatives to get better. They’ll point out completely irrelevant facts, like that wearing a red t-shirt doesn’t always bring good fortune or heal the sick, or that sometimes people die or bad things happen no matter how many consecutive days you wear the red t-shirt without washing it. But it has worked for me on several occasions, and I’m a perfectly rational person, so that should be good enough for you.

What’s more, just think of all the good we could do for the world if we took time away from charity work, academia, our jobs, etc, and all gathered in the same place and wore red t-shirts together! At the same time!!! Think of the dent we could make in world hunger or the scientific discoveries that would fall right in our laps! Hell, I’d be shocked if there was still a need for doctors.

What evidence do you have for your world view or the doctors who claim to treat patients with tested medical techniques? I should mention that their “medicine” couldn’t explain my grandmother’s cancer going into remission. They can’t explain why the red t-shirt works, and every time I pressure one of them to do so they ignore me, which proves they’re afraid of losing their jobs to enough people adopting red t-shirtism. Join me, and together we can forge a paradise on Earth.

This is how people sound to me when they tell me how effective prayer has been. Challenge to all religious people: explain why prayer is a better explanation than a red t-shirt.