‘Wise men speak because they have something to say: fools because they have to say something.’
Plato
What’s with the Slug t-shirt, Nancy?
Funny you should ask. Actually, while we were in Santa Cruz, I thought it might be nice to have a colorful Santa Cruz t-shirt. I usually like white since it looks better with my sweaters and repels the heat from the sun in the summer. However, I am having an increasingly hard time finding white - seems that everyone else who buys t-shirts buys black and brown and deep pea-green. Yecch. Not me, I want white.
Then I found this - not only white, but with a colorful picture and a story behind it. It’s the FIAT SLUG - or Latin for ‘Let there be Slug.’ Seems that the UCSC (University of California at Santa Cruz) students rebelled against the team mascot of the Sea Lions, chosen by the president and athletic officials and designed a new mascot: the Banana Slug. Now, actually, the banana slug is probably not your first choice of a fighting team mascot since it is really a slimy yellow mollusk that slides across the ground leaving an oily residue.
However the students designed a slug that reads Plato as you can see from my t-shirt, and said that it stood for contemplation (they have also designed a Zen Slug t-shirt) flexibility, and a challenge towards the status quo. Well, it certainly does that. Besides, not only is it indigenous to the area since it comes with the Redwoods north of Santa Cruz, it looks positively wonderful when compared to the Sea Lion. For a few years the Banana Slug was the ‘official’ ‘underground’ team mascot.
Finally in 1986, the Slug was named the official school mascot and it didn’t need to hide underground. Then in 1992, it was named the #1 mascot by Sports Illustrated (though it did not grace the cover of the swimsuit issue.) Then it reached new heights when John Travolta wore it in Pulp Fiction. Seems that Quentin Tarantino saw this t-shirt when his girlfriend was a student here and he requested that the SLUG be used in his film.
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