If You Bought It Off The Shelf, It's Not Custom

I made a trip to the Laconia Bike Rally once, back in the last century. I met some cool folks from Main. There was this one guy who had this rat Triumph home-made bike that was actually quite cool. It had a coffin gas tank and a raked front end. His helmet said, "If you're not like me, I hate you" and the gas tank proclaimed, "If you bought it off the shelf, it's not custom". While the first quote is a tad bit on the extreme side (we'll discuss that at a later time), I really liked the second. To me, it encapsulates the "wannabe's" of the world. "I really want something cool and unique, but I'm not 1) willing to spend the money to get a real custom job, or 2) I don't have the imagination to come up with something unique, or 3) I want to be cool, but I don't really want to work at it." According to Dictionary.com, custom, as an adjective is, "made specially for individual customers". Buying something everyone else can buy, having something everyone else has, doing something everyone else can do doesn't make you special or unique...it makes you normal. And there's nothing wrong with that, just don't prance around and think you're "custom". Kudos to those who truly embrace the life of CUSTOM.