The Golden Mistake

Now that I’m getting used to a couple of new pieces of metal in my knee, my fingers are finally getting reacquainted with my keyboard. Coincidentally, a trip I took just before this summer’s knee replacement caused me to recollect getting another piece of metal in the mail more than 50 years ago.

I had been awaiting the package eagerly. When it finally arrived, I couldn’t wait to tear open the box and inspect my new prized possession. One glance, though, and I was shocked, mortified and embarrassed all at once. My brand-spanking new, bright, shiny, 10-karat gold high school class ring had a punctuation error.

And I was responsible.

The next day back at school, I made a beeline to the office, where the principal informed me no, it would not be possible to recall and recast every ring for the Class of 1974. In other words, the mistake would be memorialized for all time.

I assigned myself responsibility for the mistake for one simple reason – as junior class president, one of my responsibilities was the design of the class ring. To be h0nest, my input was limited. It involved one meeting with the company rep to review and ratify the placement of dates and icons from previous designs. I never saw a mock-up of the final design. In other words, there was no opportunity to spot the rogue apostrophe that somehow wormed its way into my high school’s name. Still, the buck stopped with me.

The error, I believed, was especially egregious because the school, Christian Brothers Academy, is perennially the highest-ranked college preparatory school in upstate New York. A foolish mistake like that could tarnish a reputation. So when I saw the eight-letter word incorrectly spelled “Brother’s” instead of “Brothers,” I spontaneously unleashed a string of shorter, four-letter words.

I can’t remember if the screw-up ever came up with any of my classmates back then. Yet, more than 50 years later, I’m still reminded of it when I slip my ring on each morning – including the weekend of our 50th anniversary reunion.

It’s safe to assume I was the only person who thought about class rings at all that weekend. Once the preliminaries were out of the way – the handshakes and the stares at name tags of guys who looked 50 years older than they did 50 years ago – most of us found the same comfort zones we occupied in our prior lives. But with a new appreciation of what we had shared in those four important formative years.

In many ways, the culture of our high school was a cross between The Paper Chase and Animal House. As a Catholic college preparatory school, expectations were exceptionally high. So high that most of us found our freshman year in college – Ivy League and otherwise – to be a cakewalk. At the same time, CBA was a single-gender school back then. All boys. Between the ages of 14 and 18. ’Nuf said. The bonds forged in that hyper-pressurized social and academic atmosphere were built to last a lifetime – even among those of us who had little or no engagement with our classmates. The reunion only strengthened those indelible bonds. Even stronger than a misplaced apostrophe cast in gold.

The ring error did not cause CBA to suffer a fatal blow to its reputation. The embarrassment did not affect enrollment. Future generations of Brothers – male and female – established an even greater academic standing over the decades. After 50 years, the only thing that had changed was my perspective – a change my Brothers classmates significantly reinforced that reunion weekend.

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