Letter Jacketts
Letter jackets help students show school spirit. When they’re seen at
games or other events sponsored by the school, spectators know that the people
wearing them have competed in activities at the varsity level. The activities
range from sports to scholars’ bowl. At Humboldt High School, guys’
letter jackets tell all about them.
The sophomores’ letter jackets are easy to pick out of the crowd because
the body is fuzzy, the arms are shiny, and the orange is bright. Since they’ve
recently been purchased, they aren’t wrinkled and don’t hang loosely;
they are very stiff. The letters are easily visible because they aren’t
cluttered with medals and bars. Their jackets are fresh and smell like new
shoes. When the sophomores aren’t wearing their jackets, they carefully
hang them up so that they don’t get dirty.
The upperclassmen’s jackets are easy to pick out, oftentimes without
even seeing them. These students can be heard coming down the halls with all
the medals that they’ve won in events that they’ve participated
in. They are dirty and worn. The black body has collected lint. The arms soften.
The orange fades from fluorescent to nearly brown. If the students’
aren’t wearing them, the jackets may be worn by their girlfriends or
thrown on the floor of the locker room.
Just as the jackets can be distinguished from sophomores and upperclassmen,
it is also easy to identify the studs from the duds. The studs’ jackets
are congested with medals, bars, and TVL and state honors. The others that
barely qualified, the duds, have fewer bars and few or no honors. The studs
like to brag by wearing them around everywhere. The duds wear them to and
from school, hardly ever anywhere else. The
studs also get their jersey numbers from the sport they
excel in sewn onto their jacket. The duds don’t waste the money and
time worrying about getting their number sewn on.
High school experiences such as participating in sports, earning letters,
and wearing the letter jackets seem very important for four years. Students
spend many hours earning these rights and then enjoying them. However, what
happens after the four years of high school? Where do the letter jackets go?
Are they carefully cleaned and hung up in closets? Are they thrown into corners?
Are they handed down to a younger sibling? As styles come and go and as high
school becomes a memory, what is the future of the letter jacket?