This is an on again, off again subject with me.
As a kid back in the day, I wore TMNT shirts all the time, the few I did manage to own. But I got made fun of quite heavily growing up and in the very small town I live in, where everybody knows everybody else's business, I quit by junior high because the teasing was unbearable. By the time I got online and into college, I had long-since outgrown those few shirts.
I still have them, but they're packed away safely in my collection as keepsakes.
Then when Hot Topic started selling shirts I could actually wear, I was happy to get them again and wore them around the town I went to college in. It was bigger, nobody really knew me, so I could wear my shirts as I pleased and not care what everyone thought like I had to down home. Regardless of what people always told me growing up, peoples' opinions DID matter and still do matter in this tiny town, in very narrow ways. You do anything considered "odd" or not the norm, people take notice and it makes it difficult to be how you want to be around here.
When I moved home, I wore them around the house, but refused to wear them in my hometown for fear of running into those idiots who used to make fun of me. If they teased me mercilessly to the point of depression in junior high, I didn't want to think of what they'd do when I was in my 20s. And by the way, most of those people have NOT grown up, again contrary to what people told me growing up.
The same people who were decent to me I keep in touch with and can even take playful ribbing from, but others who were nasty, still are.
It honestly took a combo of Earl and accidentally wearing a shirt to Wal Mart without incident to realize that the jerks had moved and most people that were left either didn't pay attention or thought it was cool of me wearing old school TMNT gear.
I've now retired those shirts and either wear them around the house or keep them put away since I've had them for awhile and they're wearing a bit thin.
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