Pearls of Wisdom from Mother Pearl: On the Brotesque

One year after I graduated from the bastion of white privilege that is my former high school, my mother got her own taste of Deerfield.* After I left for college, my mother decided to audit a Chinese class in which she would be the sole adult, surrounded by 15-year-old New England preppy oppressors-in-training. (To put this in context, my mother began studying Chinese in the 1960s so that she would be prepared for the global Socialist revolution. I also have a picture of this woman holding a sign on the streets of San Francisco that reads STOP BLACK PANTHER EXTERMINATION. As for the average student at Deerfield...well, let's just say that on Martin Luther King Day, when a black speaker gave a speech about how oppression & white privilege still exists, he was booed off the stage. Literally booed.)

Mother Pearl on Her Classmates and their Pink Pants:

"Why do the boys dress like that? With the pink pants! I mean, you have to be rich to dress that stupid. It's like PLUMAGE. (long pause) But in the end, what's so stupid is that they are new money with no class compared to Chinese dynasties. Sometimes when they speak I wanna hurl."

For more reflections on the lasting effects of preppies, see Lau's blog and this online version of the Official Prep Handbook.

*Warning: This video features pink pants IN THE FLESH.