Our Forty-Fifth High School Reunion...

Our high school shoulder/ chest patch...

Well, I don't know how many couples will attend tonight at the Green Acres Country Club in Metairie. We've lost quite a few alumni over the last five years or so, and our graduating class was pretty small. Regardless, Therese and I are gonna get a chance to get away from everything for a few hours and enjoy each other's company. Unlike a lot of married couples who graduated from different schools and go to reunions only to feel like a third wheel, Therese and I first met at our high school, Redemptorist H.S.

Redemptorist no longer exists as a school, but for many years, it was the only Catholic co-ed school in the state of Louisiana. All through our four years, we wore uniforms. The girls all wore dark blue skirts of, supposedly, the same length which was, supposedly, just above the knee. They wore white short sleeved blouses with the above triangular patch just below a breast pocket on the left side.

The guys all wore khaki pants, dress shoes, and a long sleeve khaki shirt with the blue patch on the left shoulder. As part of our uniform, the boys all had to have a black tie which was unusually and haphazardly tied and stuffed inside the shirt just above the third button. Here's a pic from my yearbook that best shows how we had to dress for "success."

We all had to wear these name tags just above the left pocket of the shirt. Many guys, and I assume, girls too, were glad when it got colder so we could hide all of this pseudo-military paraphernalia under our sweaters. I recall that you could be reprimanded or given Saturday school duty for non-compliance.

That never happened to me because I kind of liked the disciplined, military approach to school. I always came to school with a crease on my pants and shirt because I learned how to ironed my own clothes, and it made me feel good. As a kid, I was in a drill team that wore these kind of uniforms when we marched in the Mardi Gras parades during that two week period of "undisciplined partying!"

Of course, that was back then, during the Pleistocene period before "perma-press!"

Anyway, although my letter sweaters no longer fit and my football jacket is rather moth-eaten, I think I'll bring this little patch to the gathering and see how many people still have one hidden in the windmills of the mind!

I bid you adieu by writing our Senior class of 1968 battle cry which is an indication of how we all felt.

"Imma Ram, So What?" 

Copyright 2013/Ben Bensen III