I want to expand on this a little, too: there seems to be this attitude that high school is only a great time filled with posititive memories for the well-off, popular, PTA-president mom kids and that it is hell for the ones that have disadvantages. I teach at an extraordinarally diverse public high school, and many of the kids who enjoy high school the most are the ones who have the least at home–school is where they actually have some control over their own lives and where their efforts and choices actually have rewards.
Letter jackets are a great case-in-point here. Our athletic booster club pays for them, not just for football but for JROTC, swimming, track, tennis, dance team, cheerleading, soccer, cross country, softball, baseball, basketball and so on and so forth. For a lot of our kids, that jacket is the only time anyone has rewarded them with something tangible, no strings attached, for their efforts. For many it’s also their only heavy coat, and their only peice of nice clothing that was new when they got it. You better believe they wear the hell out of them, and that those jackets will still be in closets in 35 years.
If there is ANYTHING teaching has taught me, it is that schools vary. They have vastly different cultures. Not everyone’s high school experience was like yours, and you absolutley can’t make assumptions.
Not sure if that was directed at me. I’m the only person who used the phrase “grow the fuck up” and that was directed at the people bitching about the letter jacket.
In any event, I think we’re on the same wavelength. Fuck the wannabe fashionistas. Wear what you want. If someone laughs at you, fuck 'em.
I reserve the right to laugh, especially at mullets, though.
Speaking as a member of the fashion police, I think you’re defining this a little too strictly. If the woman wore her high school letter jacket to a job interview, a wedding, a funeral, or any planned social gathering other than a costume party, I’d be the first Fashion Police Officer on the scene to issue a strongly worded citation. But she was pumping gas! In my book, the only thing your gas pumping ensemble needs to communicate to others is that your clothes are clean, fit properly, and covering up all appropriate areas of the body.
Given the scant information provided by the OP, my offering for conceivable circumstances is that the woman was in town visiting her parents. I am sad to report I have been in similar situations.
Me: I’m going to put gas in the car.
Mom: What? Without a jacket?
Me: I didn’t bring a jacket. I’m fine in my sweater.
Mom: What? You know, your high school jacket is in your closet, put that on. I’ll get it for you.
Me: No, really, that’s not necesary.
Mom: You’ll be cold! I’m getting you the jacket!
Me: Ma, no, it’s okay.
Mom: Here’s the jacket, put it on!
Me: Really, I’m fine without.
Mom: Or you could wear my coat! Here! Displays quilted pink coat with geese appliqued on the pockets.
Me: Ma! All right, give me my high school jacket.
Sometimes it really is about the lesser of two evils. And because I am willing to admit that sometimes my mother has a point, I have also found myself at the gas pump, thinking “You know, it really is kind of cold out here. Huh.”
Somewhat more seriously, what we actually know from the OP is that there was a woman getting gas wearing her Class of 84 high school jacket. Because I don’t want to put myself in an early grave getting worked up about the worst case scenarios about why she would do such a thing, I’m going to go with the most harmless theory – she needed to wear a jacket for warmth, and for some reason, not known to the OP nor to us, her high school jacket was the best choice available to her.
No, it wasn’t directed at you at all. It was aimed squarely at those who label people who wear their letter jackets/80s clothes/(insert reference here) as “sad” or “pathetic”. I just couldn’t take the thread anymore.
Tripler
I’m still going to hang out at the mall, dammit.
I hate to say this, but at first I thought Surbey was describing something that happened to him at McDonald’s :eek:
We didn’t have lettermen’s jackets at my high school, as dop-smoking was not officially recognized as a team sport.
I wore mine until my early 20s and it definitely wore out. I don’t know about other schools, but at my HS the girls didn’t get the leather sleeved type, ours were all wool. I suppose I could have had the cuffs and collar fixed (that’s what wore out), but I did lose interest at that point anyway.
I would think it would be more of a question of losing interest as marriage, job, and kids all take precidence over the functions of one’s old HS. But I agree, I don’t know that school pride is something that “should” just be something you aren’t allowed to have (or risk being ridiculed) after a certain age.
It’s possible that she remained very active in her old HS (is a teacher, has kids that go there…etc), and still wears her jacket for that reason.
OR…it’s just possible that the highlight of her life was some way past glory as a BMOC. In which case OUCH and I’d feel more sorry for her than disdainful and snootily look down my nose.
Those that are so fixated on what others are wearing and why, are a special species of lame in and of themselves.
And again, as several others have asked, why do there have to BE any “circumstances” to the wearing of a letter jacket PERIOD? Can a person not just have decided to grab it and wear it for no particular reason other than fun, or maybe being bitten by a sentimental bug? (not surprising with this some in this thread, where anything looked fondly on carries vast psychological undertones of stunted mental growth and so on :rolleyes: )
JEEEEEEEEEZ, some of you really have an overinflated sense of your own coolness and non-lameness speaking fashionwise. PUH lease!! Let he who is without fashion sin cast the first “What Not to Wear”.
I wouldn’t care enough about someone wearing a highschool jacket or ring to bother to post about it. At best (worst?) I might think it sad in a meh kind of way.
Personally, I’ve still got my high school ring. At least I assume I do, since I don’t think I would’ve thrown it out, or sold it. I still have my prom dress too. I think. Might be time to clean out the closets.
Mostly I’m posting to say that the entire time I was reading this thread Springsteen’s *Glory Days * was running through my head.
My thinking is that High School Pride tm is dumb in general. What’s there to be proud of? Placement in Public High School is just a matter of where you live. So you got assigned to attend a high school…WHERE is that acheivement/ pride in that? How do you derive pride from being assigned to a public high school?
For a lot of kids, the high school they are randomly assigned to becomes the center of their life for four years. They make it INTO a place to be proud of because of their contributions. It’s the place where they worked harder than they ever knew they could work, and it is the community they belong to.
Look, I never felt any particular pride in the three high schools I went to. All the stuff that mattered to me was outside of school. But I teach now, and I see the value that school-as-community has for many of my kids–including and especially the most disadvantaged among them. It’s the place that supports and encourages them, and the place where they can be known as a positive force.
Aw, poor baby. Still seething because the chicks with the letter jackets wouldn’t give you the time of day back in high school? It’s been 22 years. Get over it.
I still have my high school and college class rings, which I don’t wear. Heck, still have my wedding dress from 1972. I might wear that if I could figure out a good place to wear a long green dotted-swiss dress with a ruffle around the hem. Somehow I’ve had a bit of trouble figuring out where that might be, though.
Well, there is a shopping center, which apparently features a small Westernized club. Sometimes, they have a Mick Jagger-esque singer do cover songs. The band name: “The Kabul Stones”.
Well, every time I read the thread title I do it in that “Real Men of Genius” style. If they’re still doing those ads, High School Letterman Wearer would be a good one.
When I was a freshman in high school, I was in band with this guy Terry, a senior. I didn’t know him particularly well, so I don’t know what was going on in his life that for the next three years, he continued to come to marching band practices and once even marched with us during a halftime show - after he’d graduated! Yup, when I was a senior, there he was, still hanging round with the high school band. Wearing his music letterman’s jacket.
We all thought he was pretty pathetic.
I wanted a letterman’s jacket when I was in high school sooooo bad. I thought they were just super-cool looking. When I got my music letter, I begged my mom, but she told me if I wanted a $200 jacket, I’d have to pay for it myself. Yeah, right. In retrospect, I’m glad I never got it. After seeing Terry’s shining example, I’d never have worn it a second after graduating. (I think I still have my letters tucked away at my parents’ house, though!)
Yep, because everybody who had a letter jacket turned out just like Terry, right? Or are you saying that if you had had a letter jacket you’d have done the same as he? Really, I don’t say how you can speak to anything but the second option. Nobody should know better than you what a pathetic mess you can be.
