The T-Shirt and the Late Guy

So today, I missed my intended bus back to the casa and had a nice 45 minute wait to read my book. It was the day also that I had plans and also forgotten my phone somehow in the morning rush after a Wii-induced "hangover" wrought from too much WWII dogfighting action from the night before. This kid on a bike rides over and says, "Nice shirt," and I look down and realize I'm wearing my H-Town shirt from the Houston Chamber of Commerce booth at the Houston Marathon earlier this year. The well-spoken kid then proceeds to tell me that he's just finished his freshmen semester at the University of Houston and is studying to be a computer scientist. I ask him how his day is going and he says he's had a long day and he'd tried to get a haircut. Says they always screw it up and that he ends up having to fix it himself. He also says that he cut other people's hair in the dorm as a "side gig." The visit is short-lived and we part our separate ways, but the whole conversation happened because of a simple t-shirt. The discussion reminded me of a friend in college who would cut our hair in the dorms and save us some cash, so I think I'll give him a call and see how he's doing.

It would be interesting to know the effect t-shirts have had on society; to see how many ideas or products or connections were wrought as a result of someone striking up a conversation due to the superfluous t-shirt. Has anyone ever gotten married as a result of a t-shirt? Has a disease been cured as a result of a t-shirt? A lost child, found? How much of society's progress has been the result of a t-shirt, the mobile billboard of the nation. If you go to sporting events, people sometimes claw over each other to catch t-shirts fashioned into projectiles and launched with balloon-strength slingshots into the crowd. People sign up for credit cards for free t-shirts. People run marathons for free t-shirts. What if people stopped wearing them? Would society grind to a halt or would it inspire the next Renaissance?