the old man at the bar
With the exception of the kids, all of the people pictured below not only went to my high school - Saint Francis Prep - but they're all a year younger than me. Apparently they participated in a segment on CBS' morning show to surprise anchor Julie Chen for her b-day.
I think I recognize two red-hairish women to the left - the fourth woman from the left wearing the gray dress and black/white shoes, and the woman in black to her right (peeking out from behind the Asian woman). But I can't say for sure. My class was actually significantly more diverse than this picture indicates, but I have a feeling the students of color tend not to, er, cling to Saint Francis Prep the way the more emblematic Irish and Italian graduates might and missed the memo about Julie Chen's b-day. Saint Francis could graduate a million black, Latino, Filipino and Indian kids and it would still be imagined as an essentially Irish and Italian school. I remember hearing somewhere that our school lost more people in 9/11 than any high school in the city (owing to the large number of cops and firemen it's produced over the years) but that may be because Mychal Judge, the NYCFD Chaplain who died in the North Tower went to Prep.
Most of the attendees pictured above actually look reasonably put together for their visit to the studio, but that's self-selection for you. (Would you go on national teevee if you were looking a mess?) I have seen some pix of reunions on my high school site, though, that really put the fear of god in me. Leaving black-not-cracking aside for a second, it seems to me that there's a culture/class/educational dynamic at work that prematurely ages anyone I grew up with who never left Queens. The guys I grew up with in Cambria Heights - all African American and West Indian - who never left the block look old as dirt too.
But who can say for sure? Was it me that aged well or them that aged poorly? A lot of those folks have families, own property and here I am still running around chasing certain cliched anti-bourgeois dreams like I was still in my 20s. Hard to say whether or not the tendency of folks to estimate my age (depending on the lighting) at 5-9 years younger than it is reflects the good work I'm doing holding it together (ha!) or a persistently immature and adolescent lifestyle.
Fortunately I have still have all this hair, because once that goes, I am totally fucked. And it will go. If you check out the maternal uncles at my sister's wedding they are all sporting the U-shaped monks baldy and the photographic record indicates they have since their mid-30s.
I didn't know CBS's Julie Chen went to my high school, though. (Have to check the yearbook to see if I knew her in school.) I would add her to my standard schtick about Prep, which is that Joe Torre, Frank Serpico, and Vince Lombardi all went there, but she would break up the streak.
Queens and aging
You might have a good theory, there, ebog. My cousins and neighbors who never left Queens look infinitely older than me (but they also have kids, middling jobs). And, I have to admit, my fam has some of those great resilient mongrel Caribbean genes going.
One Black man's experience at St. Francis Prep.
I actually suggested to a much younger Prep alum the idea of having a Black Prep alumni reunion. He was completely hostile to the idea. He had such horrid memories of the school due to racism he claimed to experience that the idea was not acceptable. When speaking to the guys who hung out with us, they tend to be less negative about the school.
Prep actually has a facebook group and besides a few pictures you wouldn't know that there were any black people there at all. How does a High School in such an ever diversifying community stay so Italian and Irish anyway?
I remember in my senior year French class when a very popular language teacher known for his affiliation with the football team called a fellow Black student a "spear chucker" in front of the whole class. The Black student happened to be the only African American senior on the football team.
That experience did leave me a bit salty. Do you remember the organization they had called Mosaic Peace? It was a high school version of a Black Student Union. I remember my freshman year meeting many of the Black seniors and admiring them for seeming so culturally aware and racially conscious. That completely disappeared with the advent of the "Breakdance Club" which came about in the 83-84 school year. Knowledge of self replaced with hip hop sensibilities even in 83!? Damn.. Just my two cents.... Anyway, seems like SOME peole don't want to keep in contact with their people from Prep anyway, so what can you do....
some people
yes, ladies and gents, that would be me PR is calling out in public for a terrible streak of unreturned phone calls. I have issues :(
but yah, I remember that spearchucker incident. I also remember that the coach of the 95% white basketball team had a patented pep talk whenever they were facing a school with more color about how there was no reason to be intimated by a "bunch of mooks running around"and how they should stand up and show people that white guys could play ball.
I never spent much time in Mosaic Peace, I have to say. I think they had meetings the same day at the sci-fi club or something.
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