Thursday, November 11, 2010

Last Name Basis

From the first days of school, we manly fellows addressed each other by last name.

It was not James, Danny, Stephen, John, but Behan, Boylan, Burke, Calabrese, et al.

It didn't have to do with being seated alphabetically. The girls were, too, on their half of the room, but they were Angela, Patty, Gianna, Karen, not Accardi, Achacoso, Alonzo, Amato.

It projected toughness and authority in a setting where you were pretty vulnerable, psychologically and physically.

If I am "Burke" to you, you are certainly not "Jimmy" to me. You're lucky you're not "pal."

St. Catherine's recognized our vulnerability by putting first- and second-grade boys in the girls' schoolyard, rather than with the third- through eighth-grade boys.

The schoolyards were separated by a big wire fence. You weren't scared or anything, but it was smart to stay away from the perimeters, where through the fence there was ribald taunting of first-grade babies and second-grade tots, and the occasional well-placed clam, or gob of spit.

In the boys' schoolyard were games of dodgeball and punchball. In the girls' was tether ball and jump rope.

Of course, for a boy, these activities were out of the question - the jump rope categorically, and tether ball by association. Once, James Fiore tried a little jump rope. There was an immediate, rabid raid from the boys' schoolyard. He was abducted and deposited into the St. Vincent de Paul dropbox in the boys' yard. It was a big metal box with a pretty small slot.

So, younger boys spent recess and lunch time flipping baseball cards or pitching pennies. I did a certain amount of that, but wasn't very good at it, and didn't have much money to lose. So I spent a lot of time just hanging around, talking and joking with last-name guys and first-name girls. I must have realized on some level that never again would I be in a daily social situation with females outnumbering males 4 to 1.