I didn’t get to post yesterday because I was playing golf in a charity tournament, the Wolfpack Classic. The Wolfpack Classic raises money for Boston Latin School’s (BLS) athletic department. I graduated from Boston Latin School in 1974 and to date, it is still the most difficult thing I have ever accomplished in my life.

Boston Latin School is the nation’s first public school, founded in 1635. Five of its pupils were signers of the Declaration of Independence, John Hancock, Ben Franklin, Samuel Adams, Robert Treat Paine & William Hooper. Arthur Fiedler was a graduate as was Leonard Berstein, Cotton Mather, Ralph Waldo Emerson and more recently, CNN’s John King. It is a public school that accepts everyone on the basis of scholastic merit. You have two chances to gain entry into BLS, one in the 7th grade and the second in the 9th grade. I attended from grades 7-12.

More on BLS after the jump.

I was very fortunate to graduate from Latin School. Once, about 8 years ago and 26 years after my graduation, Headmaster Michael Contampasis, came to visit me in my office on a fund raising tour. Mike, a graduate of Latin School himself and my former chemistry teacher, was looking to raise money for a new wing of the school. This was his opening gambit, “Mike, as I recall, you weren’t a very good student at Latin School.”

To quote that very famous philosopher, Bart Simpson, “doh.”

I did, in fact, learn a lot at Latin School. You had to. Nearly 2/3 of the students who started with you didn’t make it to graduation. You were dropped into the deep end of the pool and told to swim or “die.” Swim meant 5-7 hours of homework per day even if you were involved in athletics or other after school endeavors. The homework consisted of Latin (of course), Greek, the aforementioned Chemistry, 4 years of a modern language (mine was French, though it felt like 4 years of French I) and History (Both World & US).

As you might imagine of a school as old as BLS, there are many time honored traditions. My favorite, and this will come as no surprise to those who know me, was Declamation. From the 7th grade to the 10th grade a student was required to give an oration to their English class three times a year. It could be poetry or prose of twenty lines or more. One of my favorites was The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson written in 1854. It began like this:

Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns’ he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

I also loved reciting Gunga Din from Rudyard Kipling written in 1892 that began,

You may talk o’ gin and beer
When you’re quartered safe out ‘ere,
An’ you’re sent to penny-fights an’ Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ‘im that’s got it.
Now in Injia’s sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin’ of ‘Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.
He was “Din! Din! Din!
You limpin’ lump o’ brick-dust, Gunga Din!
Hi! slippery hitherao!
Water, get it! Panee lao!
You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din.

But I think it was my sophomore year and last year of Declamation before I finally had the courage to recite my best oration of my BLS career. It began,

Some fellas look at the eyes
Some fellas look at the nose
Some fellas look at the size
Some fellas look at the clothes
I don’t care if her eyes are red
I don’t care if her nose is long
I don’t care if she’s underfed
I don’t care if her clothes are worn
First I look at the purse!

Some fellas like the smiles they wear
Some fellas like the legs that’s all
Some fellas like the style of their hair
Want their waist to be small.
I don’t care if their legs are thin
I don’t care if their teeth are big
I don’t care if their hair’s a wig
Why waste time lookin’ at the waistline?
First I look at the purse!

First I look at the Purse- J. Geils Band

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