The Junior - 1973-1974

This ID picture used to be my favorite from high school. Looking at it today, I'm not as pleased with it. When I was taken to shop for school clothes for my junior year, I was disappointed that the cuffed bell bottom pants from the previous year were not in the stores any more. My junior year was marked by the trouble I was in. My grades were OK as I recall. No, the trouble was that I smoked. Got caught smoking in the bathroom once and got caught returning to campus during the school day after smoking a cigarette. It was against the rules for us to smoke on campus and it was also against the rules to leave campus during the school day. De La Salle's campus extended for a two-block radius. Don't remember if I got caught on campus first and left campus the second time or got caught off campus the first time and took my chances on campus the second time.

I was in trouble at least one more time but I don't remember why. For punishment, the Christian Brothers, particularly the disciplinarian, liked to make us memorize and recite poetry. My first detention saw me recite Abou Ben Adhem. It remains my favorite poem. I look it up occasionally because I can't recite it any more. The thing about reciting poetry to Brother Justin was you couldn't skip a word or mix the words up because he knew the poems cold. If you messed up, you sat down and went over it for a few minutes until he was ready to hear you again. They got progressively worse if you had to see him again. The next one was Jabberwocky, which gave me fits. I couldn't stand it. It's Patsy's favorite and she CAN recite it. I can't put two words of that monstrosity together. The last was The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Yeah, he was tired of seeing me. Despite its length, this one was easier for me to recite than Jabberwocky. This was all first semester nonsense. I straightened myself out.

Just an aside: Brother Justin is the only person I remember showing the picture of me holding my twin baby sisters. "They're beautiful. They look just like you with their brown hair and wide open brown eyes."