The other day I was reading Paul?s blog and I forgot in what context it was mentioned, but he commented on the term ?monkey slave?. My first thought was that it would be a great school nickname, like the Moore Park High School Monkey Slaves. If I started my own high school, like Dobrindt Meadow High School, I would call our mascot, or whatever you call the nickname thing, the Monkey Slaves, not the bulldogs, wildcats or screaming eagles. Then I got to thinking about my own high school, Hicksville High School in Hicksville, NY, population 50,000. I was pretty active in high school with sports (football, lacrosse), student government (believe it or not, I was junior and senior class president) and social activities, so I used our mascot theme often. We were the Comets. The Hicksville High School Comets. Which, in hindsight, kind of stinks. The junior high is the Meteors. While in high school, I never really gave much though to it, but with the Monkey Slave thing I started to realize how odd of a name it is. I am kind of curious as to
1. How many high schools in the country use ?Comets?, and what is the most popular name?
2. Why did Hicksville use the ?Comets?. Why not the tigers, panthers, titans, farmers, islanders, etc. Why a chunk of frozen gasses, ice, and rocky debris that orbits the sun.
My first thought was that Haley?s comet was around when the school was formed, or some other comet. Or that Comet was popular when the school was formed. I?m not sure.
Who knows? Maybe I will never know. It?s not like there is some magical education tool that allows me to enter a word, term or phrase and I can access over 2 billion locations that might provide an explanation. Nothing like that around Boston that I know of. Too bad, it will continue to bug me.
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