I was walking in Brooklyn Heights in the early afternoon of July 19, 2025, when I crossed paths on the sidewalk with a group of three. Two men, both of whom I think were in their late 20s to 30s, were walking next to each other, trailed by a boy who looked to me to be in the neighborhood of 13. The boy was smirking while the two men were going back and forth. I overheard enough of what the men were saying to have an idea why the boy was smirking.
One of the two men was amped up. Just as I came into earshot, I heard him exclaim:
I am the mat!
He said it in a way that suggested that he was bragging about being the mat. Since I presume this was a nickname, we will capitalize it from hereon out: “The Mat.”
The man walking next to The Mat was smirking like the boy behind the pair. He was much less hyperactive than The Mat and responded to The Mat calmly and without hesitating:
Oh, so you’ll just roll yourself up and stuff yourself into a bag then.
Well-played sir, well-played. It took me about five seconds to process the exchange and commit it to memory so I could turn it into a feature article on this perennially virid website. By the time I thought well played, they were already decently far down the sidewalk.
Why did the “The Mat” man excitedly refer to himself as The Mat? I suspect it was not because he was referring to himself as a doormat or bathmat in the way his friend or brother suggested. Dude, I got three theories:
- “Mat” was short for “Laundromat,” as in he takes people to the cleaners. Staying on the laundry theme, he could have been bragging about his nonpareil ability to put someone in the “spin cycle.” The gentleman was wearing an athletic shirt and they were walking in a direction that would take people down to Brooklyn Bridge Park, so perhaps it was a sporting brag (I would guess basketball). There are stranger self-bestowed sports nicknames out there.
- Staying on the sports theme, perhaps he was or is a Greco-Roman wrestler. This seems less likely than theory A, but why dismiss options out of hand?
- His name is actually “Matt” and he is referring to himself in the third person as “The Matt.” That would be depressing so I exercise my discretion to discount the possibility.
My first thought after hearing it was “Laundromat” and taking people to the cleaners, so I will stake that as my guess for why he is proud of being The Mat.
Unless The Mat (or his friend or brother or whoever the man with the good retort was) happens to read this, I suppose we will never know for certain.
