Open Thread

Arkady, you fit in your clothes from High School?
I only dream of that day.
Plus I had an awful wadrobe in high school….much like present.

Stick the bill inside a book so he’ll find it when he reads it. I’ve also put bills inside helium balloons & taped a lot together so they pulled out of a “money machine” – a Kleenex box I trimmed w/ thematic stickers.

Is clothing “vintage” if it’s stuff of your own? I’m still wearing things I had in high school – class of ’61.

CGar, I beg to differ.
BUT you are SHORT and trampy in your own way.
You live on the other side of Atlantic so it is remote.
YOU do have big hair. Your boyzillian is overdue.
As for the stilettos, you might consider them so we can finally see eye to eye.

I went to my 35th Anniversary HS reunion on Saturday. What a great time. Even though my high School is located on the UES (Regis High School, on 84th between Park and Madison Avenues), its population (at that time) was overwhelmingly working-class Irish and Italian kids from areas like the upper Manhattan and the Bronx and southern Brooklyn. The reason for this is that Regis is an all-scholarship, private Catholic school for boys. It was founded by a wealthy, anonymous family to provide a free top-notch education for kids like me.

Regis was, and still is, a special place. It is run by the Jesuits, and one of my memories of the place is of tough Irish Jesuits (who looked like they could also serve as boxing trainers) who walked around in cossacks, reading the classics in their original language. Indeed, we were all required to study Latin and/or Classical Greek for 3 years, as well as a foreign language.

What makes Regis unique is that it is a prep school populated by kids from NYC working-class homes. My parents would never have been able to afford a place like Regis. We studied classical Greek with a New Yawk accent.

Going to my reunion took me back to the days when alot of NYC was populated with the so-called “white ethnics”. I met my old chum, Jim Murphy, and he was typical. His father owned an Irish bar on 6th Ave (think Blarney-Stone place) and he and his 4 borthers lived in a 2 bedroom apartment in Inwood.

I excelled in the Classics, and was one of 5 seniors selected to the “Homeric Academy”. I had to translate 1/3rd of the Odyssey from the original Greek, and then went to a symposium at Columbia to defend my work. I had to be prepared to translate any part of my 1/3rd of the Odyssey at the Professor’s request, without the use of notes. Hey, I was a big hit with the gals, you can imagine!!! Who needed personality or good looks when you could tell a girl that you could translate classical Greek.

My mentor in Greek, Father Kelly, was bitterly disappointed when I told him that I had decided to study engineering. As far as the Jesuits were concerned, engineers are just glorified mechanics.

How good is Regis (at the risk of bragging)? We were the only school in NYS exempt from taking the Regents exam.