IND is an all
girls catholic highschool attended by your grandmother, mother, aunts, cousins, and sisters. No, it's not surrounded by rolling hills and beautiful trees, but within the first week of receiving your license, you've learned to parallel park in spaces just inches larger than your car. You regularly drive to the Inner Harbor for
lunch and proudly wear your uniform in public.
You know that Hildie will give you a free
lunch, cut you a break in detention, and give you change if you need it. You appreciate the fact that your lunch
table is probably more diverse than the entire student body at other schools. You
get less sleep during Spirit Week than you do during exam week and understand that no true
INDian will ever wear red unless it's her class color.
Freshmen enter wearing high socks,
long skirts, nametags, and tucked-in shirts; they never go down the "up only" stairs. By Senior year, your
skirt has become 8 inches shorter, your name-
tag has been "on order" (for the past three years), you've slept in your uniform more than once, and you're lucky to even find socks in the
morning. You've also never heard of wearing make-up, shaving your legs, or brushing your hair during the week. By the time you graduate, you have fallen down the slate stairs at least once and when others fall, it's more acceptable to point and laugh than offer help.
With 100 days left, you hang your winter
skirt from the slate stairs. Despite four years of complaining, you cry when you hear the final
blessing on your last day; you vow to visit as an alum at the first chance you get. When you process from the Cathedral on graduation wearing matching
long white gowns carrying a dozen red roses, you know you are not only leaving your class, but your family. You love your school and others will never understand.
