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Why (as in yaverbaum)
least as far as I was concerned. At that time, however, people started “going steady,” and it was the fashion for the boy to have a silver-colored bracelet made with his name on it (an “ID” bracelet) and then give it to his steady girl, who would, naturally, wear and flourish it. She then could dramatically throw it at him at the moment of breakup, adding some appropriate justification. My first steady girl (not counting Harriet Levin, who, you will remember, received my one-dollar valentine in the third grade) was Lana Tobias. I remember neither the breakup with Lana nor the onset of a new steady relationship after it in junior high. I do know that Lana and I did go steady and did break up, but I certainly don’t recall anything that we did when we went steady. That is why I refer to my social life in junior high school as academic.
The only other strong memory that I have of Hudde was that, when we graduated in a ceremony in Walt Whitman Auditorium at Brooklyn College, we were not permitted to sit next to friends of our choice. Nei- ther were we seated alphabetically, which would have put me you know where. Height order by gender might have made sense as a basis for positioning the graduates, but that was not the seating plan that was adopted either, nor was it one that I would have gained from. And class standing (which probably was not computed) could not be used for class sitting. (Sorry.)
How then, on this most sentimental of days, would you have seated the ninth-graders who were about to leave the warm embrace of Hudde to face the cold reality of high school? Why, by voice part, of course! A very enthusiastic music teacher, whose name is and should be lost to history, wanted to display our choral gifts, especially during the last song, a truly heartfelt rendition of our prized alma mater, “Andries Hudde, We Salute Thee,” the second line of which was “We rejoice to sing thy name,” a paean that some of us thought to be hilarious. (The music teacher apparently believed that we had become very attached to our cherished alma mater and its namesake during the two or three years when less lofty matters monopolized our attention.)
Thus, there was one section of the auditorium filled with the basses, or what passed for the basses at that time; one section for the tenors; one
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