This week I sat down with Matthew Patterson, known as the “kid who wears dragon shirts.” While many students know him by his attire, I figured it was time to find out the man behind dragon. Patterson is from Carlisle, MA, his favorite color is purple, and he is one of the nicest kids out there. Here’s what he had to say.
Q: Do you know you are kind of well known on campus as the “kid who wears dragon shirts”?
A: I think I’ve heard that once or twice.
Q: How do you feel about this?
A: There are worse things to be known for.
Q: Where do you buy your shirts?
A: All over the place. I buy a lot of them on dharmarose.com.
Q: I will definitely check that site out. Have you always worn them?
A: It kind of started gradually. I began wearing them sometime in early high school. I don’t think there was really any thought to it. I just gotta wear some sort of shirt so I figure it might as well be a shirt of something I like.
Q: Does your whole family wear dragon shirts?
A: My brother does. He’s into this kind of stuff too.
Q: Your parents or any aunts or uncles?
A: Hahaha, no.
Q: If you could dress any Conn professor in a dragon shirt, who would it be?
A: I don’t know. That’s a tough one. Who would it be interesting to see in a dragon shirt… probably professor Monce.
Q: What does he teach?
A: Physics. I’m a physics major.
Q: What languages do you speak?
A: Just English.
Q: That’s a good one, though. If you could trade places with any one person, living or dead, real or fictional, who would it be?
A: Well, I really like Lord of The Rings (as you could probably tell). But I don’t know if I would want to trade places with any of them. I’m happy being me.
Q: Similar question: who would you want to play you in a movie?
A: No one really looks like me. Some no name actor I guess because if it were a celebrity, everyone would think of them instead of me.
Q: What’s your favorite type of dragon?
A: The European classical dragon. Standard four legs, two wings, breathes fire.
Q: If these dragons were around today, where would they live? Amongst humans?
A: I think they’d live as far away from people as possible. That’s what the myths say. Even in medieval times, they lived as far away from civilization as possible.
Q: Maybe they are out there right now. If you were the richest person in the world, what would you want your wealth to be in?
A: I’d probably go with knowledge cause it can get you most anything else you’d want.
Q: Smart man. I want to ask you a few questions about Conn. Do you like Harris? What do you eat?
A: Yeah, Harris is fine. I have pasta and 1% milk almost everyday.
Q: How do you view the average student at Conn?
A: Um… I’m not sure I have a collective image of the average student. I meet a lot of people and everyone is pretty different.
Q: And last but not least, what are your graduation plans? Will you continue to wear dragon shirts into the “real world”?
A: I will definitely continue to wear the shirts. I have no clue what I will do after college.
Q: Oh, also, some lady friends of mine wanted me to ask you, are you single?
A: Yup.
