So it goes...

Last time, I talked a bit about my high school and how different I thought it was than the "average" high school experience people of my age. There's a few more things that are unique about my experience that I think are kind of interesting. For instance, there's probably not too many people that hitchhiked to high school. Yeah, well I got that privilege. There were a number of us who hitchhiked up Hamline Avenue to get to school. Most often, there was a parent of another Cretin student who would pick kids up one at a time, like dropped change. It wasn't always the same parent, but we had our regulars. Mine was Mrs. Martin, who took her son Bob and I to school almost daily. If she didn't make it though, some other kind soul did. I look back on it as kind of a weird occurrence, actually. I guess it was a different (read: safer) time, but there was still a lot of potential for things to go wrong. (This fear I have of getting in a vehicle only to find that th...

A little known fact is that I went to an all-male, military, Catholic high school. At the time I went there it was called Cretin High School . I don't think about it much until people mention their high school experience. Then when I mention mine, it strikes me how unique that experience truly was. I would like to say that it was a uniquely perfect experience, but I'd be lying. It was both good and bad, as most people's high school experience probably was. If I had to do it over however, I would likely change some things. (I'll talk about these later.) The school is in St. Paul, Minnesota and just across "the field," as it was called, was Derham Hall, the all-female, Catholic high school. Cretin ran a Junior ROTC program using a combination of active and retired military instructors, Christian Brothers, and lay teachers. As you can see from the picture, we wore military uniforms; green slacks, tan shirt, black tie, black socks, black shoes, name tag and...