16 Comments

Believe it or not, the writer of this piece was in my high school graduating class. We were pals. That is Stuyvesant High School, 1980.

He was a satirist then, too.

The apple rarely falls far.

We also had, supposedly, Beastie boy Adam Horowitz.

We DID have two of the world’s leading scientists, Michael Greene and Lisa Randall. I asked out the latter. Like all the other girls, she turned me down.

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Hello, David. Welcome to the Banter, one of my favorite hangouts since early 2017, when the shadow first fell upon us. This is a great place for classic liberals and all sorts of independent thinkers. It's helped keep me sane for the better part of a decade.

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I remember being in AP physics class with Randall and (Brian) Greene. That was a helluva bell curve experience, struggling with basic thermodynamics while mixed in with kids who would go on to reimagine the universe.

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I asked Lisa Randall out. She looked at me funny.

Brian Greene showed up in the movie 'Frequency."

I hated that place. I still do.

I gave Murray Kahn a written 15-page screed offering to kill myself if he would give my parents two memos: one justifying my death, the other granting my brother status as a disabled student.

I slapped it in his hands before going to Litwin's chem class. When I returned 42 minutes later, he was standing outside his office, looking like he was hit on the head by a brick.

He told me he wanted to see me, the school counselor, and one of my parents in his office at 9 a.m. the next day.

A friend of mine who teaches special ed tells me that if I had done that today, they wouldn't respond like that...they'd get me down to the school nurse and call EMT for immediate intervention.

It was a complete and utter misery.

And now they have the nerve to beg me for money I haven't got.

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I remember seeing him in "Frequency." The '69 Mets figured in as well.

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The whole film is about a ham radio that connects a father and son through the decades and over the 1969 Mets.

Terrific picture. Very moving ending.

Even for a Yankee fan like myself.

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Stuyvesant ‘67 here. No women then. 🤔😉😊

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That started in 1970.

Until then, SHS boys met their girls at Washington Irving at 15th Street and Irving Place, which was the women's version of that institution.

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I remember some girl sued in ‘65 or ‘66, but lost — this was pre-Title IX.

Were you still on E 15th? I recall a “mixer” with Washington Irving girls my Sophomore year. Living in Far Rockaway, everyone (OK, I) was “geographically unavailable”. Ah, we were so innocent… 🤔😉😊

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When David and I graduated, the old building still had a dozen years to go as home to Stuy. When it was put out to pasture in '92 and they opened the new "campus" at Battery Park, I was Manhattan Borough Engineer and got to see them bring in the pedestrian bridge by barge and lower it over the West Side Highway onto two new piers.

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Yes, it was the result of a lawsuit. The first girls arrived in 1970.

I attended the school on East 15th Street. It originally had an iron forge in what became the secondary gym on the first floor. All high schools in New York built at that time had an industrial arts section. Charles Evans Hughes had a textile mill.

Read my three-part Substack essay "Mathematics and Me" for more detail on my ordeal there. The climax of it was not my attempt to kill myself, but what followed...my offer to an assistant principal to commit suicide in front of him if he would 1.) write a memo for my parents on why my death was a good thing 2.) write a second memo granting my disabled brother that bloody elevator pass and excuse from gym they refused to give him.

My father's first cousin lived in Far Rockaway. I remember the long trips to visit him. The ride on the A Train across Jamaica Bay is one of the best views on the system. I liked Broad Channel for its utter isolation and wildlife refuge. Less so for its insular racism.

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Did you ask AI to make the picture? That's not O.J.

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This is embarrassing. The guy looks like he could maybe be OJ's cousin twice removed.

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Of course it's AI. Bad AI, used badly. Look at the hands!

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Inferring re Ivana Trump, R.I.P. too?

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I have to laugh because I thought this too when I heard that OJ died. It popped in my head - "Gee, couldn't you see Trump choosing OJ as VP?". You basically completed my original thought.

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