HE SAID: Uniforms

I didn't know her as well as I wanted

I read your post, Nifer, and I immediately thought back to my favorite movie quote about uniforms (shocking, I realize, that I my first thought was unoriginal) “Catholic school girls. The uniform’s what does it for me. I wish I had’ve went with more Catholic school girls when I was a kid. As it stands I have no, ‘And then she unzipped her jumper,’ stories.”

It’s from “Chasing Amy,” a terrific Kevin Smith film.  And it actually applies to me, because I don’t have any of those stories either.  Of course, the local Catholic School most likely would’ve rejected my application, given I am one of Abraham’s kin and all.

Truthfully, uniforms and dress codes is a bit of a sore subject for me.  My first experience with them came in the 5th grade.  Up til then at me school we had a very lax code, something along the lines of no shorts after September and before May, and no jeans.  That was it.  Then all of a sudden the new headmaster decided it would be inappopriate to wear logo t-shirts, meaning I could no longer rock my sick-ass Charlotte Hornets T featuring Larry “Grandmama” Johnson on it.  Needless to say I, along with most of my classmates, were incensed.  The reasoning was kind of asanine, he thought we were fighting too much about sports teams, though there were no recorded incidents of a group of 6th graders manhandling a 5th grader wearing New York Yankee clothing (though I submit that would have been just fine).

Anyway, all the 5th graders started a petition and everyone in our class signed it…except one (for the sake of anonymity, we’ll call him Benji).  One of my two best friends, who later went on to be 8th grade class president as well as something to do with the student council in high school, would not sign it.  He didn’t want to buck against the establishment.  That crushed me.

Actually, that’s really all I have to say about uniforms.  While I dealt with dress codes until college, they were pretty lax so I never paid much attention to them.  Though I will mention I didn’t wear denim (EVER) from 6th grade til sophomore year of college.  So there you go Benji, thanks alot for always making me associate uniforms and dress codes with your pathetic cowering to ‘the man.’