In your average school, the school mascot is a tradition that goes back for years or even decades. Few people realize how hard it is to make costumes for mascots. Just coming up with an original idea can be a lot of work. You see, if your school mascot has been around for a long time, people just accept it for what it is. Even if your school has an animal for a mascot that is not very tough – such as a beaver or a duck – no one seems to mind. After all, who wants to argue with tradition? But if on the other hand you are making a new mascot, everyone has something to say. Either an animal is not tough enough or too frightening, either a mascot school costume is impractical or not politically correct.
When I joined the school mascot committee, I thought my job would be easy. You see, I have always been pretty good at costumes. From the time I was very young, in fact, I have enjoyed sewing. My mother taught me how to do it and, by the time I was 5, I had mastered both sewing by hand and with a machine. I figure that making a mascot costume would be a lot of fun, and I didn't anticipate there being a lot of discussion when we were picking out the animal. After all, isn't one animal every bit as good as another?.
Apparently, there is a lot more to it than I had anticipated. Although no one seemed to know very much about school mascots, everyone agreed that everyone else's approach was wrong. The coach wanted a school mascot that was tough, something like a lion or a bear. The parents wanted something that was cute so that when they took their younger children to games, they would identify with it. No one really anticipated it being difficult to pick out, so we had not come up with a way to decide amongst ourselves. We talked it over for hours before we finally came to a decision. Our schools mascot would be the Husky.
Making the school mascot costume was comparatively easy. There are a lot of costume companies that offer kits as well as homemade costumes. Although some people on the committee wanted to simply buy a custom made school mascot uniform, I convinced them to let us work on it by hand. We bought a kit and got to work modifying it. I think everyone is pretty happy with the results. At least the discussion is over!
|
