Lunch With The Biddies

 

The Biddies - Class of 1952

On Saturday, Grandpère very kindly drove me to Mandeville, Louisiana, to Grillot's Oyster Bar and Restaurant for a luncheon with my high school classmates. Ours was a small class, only 22, so we all knew one another quite well, and many of us have kept in touch. Eleven attended the luncheon, which I think was quite a good turnout. One woman even came from California. Others are spread around the country, and a few have died. I attended an all girls Roman Catholic high school. I believe that, in many ways, separating the sexes in high school leads to better education, especially for girls.

GP was not going to eat with us, because he was the only man there, and he didn't want to spoil our fun. As though he would have spoiled our fun. Fortunately, another husband showed up, and the two of them entertained each other.

We reminisced about our high school days, laughed and joked quite a bit about how we are all falling apart physically and mentally. We did the usual passing around of pictures of children and grandchildren.

One woman brought a few old photos of us in our high school days. One showed three of us in shorts, short shorts, for bermuda shorts were not yet in style. We are on what looks like a cliff, posing like WWII pin-up girls. I cannot imagine where the cliff was, for we have very few cliffs around here. One girl is standing on a rock, hands on hips, the other posing on the grass, and I am sitting facing the camera, with one leg dangling over the side of the cliff, and the other leg propped up, bent at the knee, close to my body, and I'm holding my leg in the bent position. Well, there's quite a bit of my back thigh showing, even moving beyond thigh. What was I thinking? In those days the picture would have been quite shocking. If the nuns who taught us had ever seen it, they would have torn it up. We were often reminded that, wherever we were, we represented the school and not just ourselves.

Several of us went on to Loyola University after we graduated. We all spent time in the classroom of an elderly Jesuit philosophy professor. In his prime, he was a brilliant teacher, but when he taught us he was old and in decline. His wit was still sharp and biting, but he seemed to have lost certain of his inhibitions. He smelled bad, too.

We had quite a laugh over our time in his class when there were three girls named Tootsie, Teetsie, and Tessie. The old priest could never keep straight who was who. He'd say, "Tootsie, what are your thoughts on what I just said?" And she'd say, "First of all, I'm not Tootsie, I'm Tessie." And he'd go into his rant, "Tootsie, Teetsie, and Tessie in one class! How can I be expected to keep that straight?"

He called me Miss Best-Dressed, because, by some miracle, I was selected among the ten best-dressed coeds. I had very little money for clothes, so I still can't understand how that ever came to be.

 

Three Biddies

 

Here be the mens.