Senior Rings

Dear Saved By the Bell fans,

Balfour’s business model depends primarily on school pride and the popularity that exists only amongst seniors during their last year in school. Fortunately for them, it works enough to pry a couple hundred from enough cash-strapped students to make it somewhat profitable. They did not get anything from me; all my cash went to one of the only two adornments a guy can wear without question: the wristwatch. The other adornment is the circlet of death typically worn on the finger next to the pinky on the left hand. Let us have a moment of silence for our fallen comrades. May their mates forgive them their foibles and not nag them too terribly much.

I had recently watched an episode of Saved by the Bell where Zack (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) gets tricked into buying fake rings for the entire school. And it seemed like the entire school got a ring. Honestly? Was it just the times (a 90s era sitcom) or do most people at predominantly white schools buy rings?

As a male in the real world (i.e. out of school and working), I find that tailoring first impressions is a must to be successful in any venture. The clothes someone chooses and the expression someone wears on his face tells a lot about the character, even if I don’t know a shred of the ‘personality’. The exterior gives an impression of the interior. Always. A man who doesn’t take care of himself externally likely doesn’t take care of himself internally. And the converse is mostly true as well, except in the case of depressed narcissists, which is fairly common (a psychologically tortured person with a show-stopping exterior)*.

This is not in defense of people who are shallow. And I'm not saying that the 'inside' doesn't count. I am simply stating that people develop preconceived notions because of a generalized perception of truth, which may or may not be ultimately true. As one of my favorite authors** wrote, 'If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.' If you see what looks like a car but you've never actually seen the model before, would it be prejudicial to think that it has four wheels, a steering column, a gearbox and brakes?

(Finally getting to the point of this post) So in my opinion, a man who wears a class ring is stuck in the nostalgia of former days long lost. Or he is still a boy in the midst of getting some serious poo-tang as a high school/ college senior. (Maybe I should have gotten a class ring). A class ring is like a letterman jacket, an article that is only attractive to pre-pubescent girls and those under the tender age of legal consent. Whereas my Gucci has turned heads from 12 to 21 to 51 to 71.

Thankfully I haven’t seen a letterman jacket except at church, worn by obvious teens. And fortunately, the class ring is starting to phase out among the younger crowd, though it seems that Aggies and Longhorns still have a tendency to pimp the right ring finger.

[insert one of 10,000,000 Aggie jokes here]. Half my high school who went to college when to A&M, so I think I can say this. If they're insulted, they can always point out that my alma mater's website is www.uh.edu (double-u double-u double-u dot uh dot com.

I can’t say anything about women with class rings since I clueless about women fashion. All I know is that some Manolo Blahniks and Jimmy Choos cost as much as my entire watch collection, and my watches never touch the pavement.

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*reference: all the people who end up on TMZ.
**Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy