Daniel Burk

By signing-up does this mean I'll get calls asking me to buy Chocolate Turtles every Fall?

"The Phantom", who pulled-off (no pun intended) the single greatest act of rebellion witnessed in Watterson's 50+ storied years by urinating (or soemthign close to it) in the trash cans of vacant classrooms for three months before getting caught. The culprit was a "brown noser" whose job it was to collect the attendance sheets from the home rooms. (He remains affectionately remembered as the "The rebel without a pause" and I think there's a dead spot on the school lawn that keeps his memory.

Msgr. Spires telling us that the monthly school newspaper was to serve as our School's Annual. (Cheap Prick) How are those "Eagle's Nest's " (or whatever they called it) holding up for you guys?

The fact that at graduation with a class of 264, probably 245 of us were virgins. (I include myself and this came to an end thankfully on graduation night--God bless you Marti H. wherever you are)

The overwheening and inordinate pre-occupation with "control" over everything we did and thought; as witnessed having to buy both our locks for our lockers and our copies of books like "Romeo and Juliet" from the school bookstore. Apparently, we weren't trustworth regarding even those small slots in the wall for ourselves at school and couldn't be trusted to absorb the lusty verses in Shakspeare's masterpiece without losing our moral compasses, so the nuns blacked out the more salacious parts in the bookstore copies. I always wondered how they knew what was dirty?


Msgr. Spires slapping and then kicking Mike Stankiwitz (sp?) as he lay on the floor of his office for having the audacity to smirk while being lectured for making a joke in class--the joke was clean and it was funny too.

The football team! That effing football team that sucked the life out of every other activity at Watterson, other than the Turtle drive, of course, which ostensibly raised money for that effing fooball team! and Sister Amy's beloved Science Fair.

The sacrament of confession in the gym during the Annual Retreats (we had no School Annual but we had an annual retreat) and hearing two fellow '65ers (girls) taliking while waiting in line to confess about how they were so embarassed to confess sexual sins that they just used the catch-all "I disobeyed my parents 10 times" ------and who said we didnt learn anything in High School.

Still with all the sarcastic slams at the place we know as "Watterson", it remains somewhere in our psyche--maybe because we were so young and full of possibilities--everything looked "up' in those days--our lives, our careers, our futures. It's rich and even at times satisfying to look back at it from here now--back over 54 years and so much of our lives gone--for good or bad.

My only hope is that each fellow 65er has found peace in his or her life and found a way to be true to themselves. If so, then maybe our parents and Watterson did something right. Danny Burk