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| I went to high school at Elder, an all-boys Catholic school on the west side of Cincinnati, OH. If you went to a Catholic grade school as well, as most kids did, it was quite possible to associate exclusively with either current Elder students, prospective Elder students, or Elder alumni, with all the male members of your family being included in one of the categories. An anthropologist out there could probably study this more in depth, but these types of communities tend to produce their own legends and initiation ceremonies. One of my favorites from the Elder community was selling passes to nonexistent amenities to eager Elder freshmen. There were several of these, but the most popular were the elevator pass, the pool pass, and the Tunnel to Seton pass. The elevator was nowhere to be found, the pool was allegedly on the roof, and the tunnel to the girls' school across the street was supposedly accessed by going through the locker room. What made the laughable exercise entertaining was that absolutely everyone was in on the joke except for the freshmen. For a freshman at the big high school, it was like when you were a kid right about to quit believing in Santa Claus but everyone around you is still talking about him. There's still that seed of doubt that makes you hold on. |
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In the case of the elevator passes, it was your neighbors, uncles and older kids you knew from grade school telling you how to get an elevator pass the first week of school. They would give you "inside secrets" about how to bargain with the seniors when acquiring one, which were apparently limited in number. How the seniors got them in the first place was always a little fuzzy, but it was some kind of senior privilege. After the first few days of school, someone who hadn't figured out the joke yet would sit down at the lunch table showing off a shiny new pool pass. A somewhat wiser freshman would respond with the crushing pronouncement that there was no damn pool and everyone would respond that they knew all along. I held out too long and never got mine.
A few years ago the school did a major renovation of the facilities that included updates for handicapped students, including an elevator. That part of the renovation was funded by alumni purchases of gold-plated elevator passes.
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