To Mock Kinkaid Properly, St. John's Seniors Borrow Kinkaid's Clothes

So the mockery requires a favor from the people being mocked. Rivalry, done properly, needs the rival's cooperation, a parking lot and a hanger.

Monday. Boas, tiaras and the occasional ball gown arrive in purple and gold. The boas are the dean of students' favorite, she told the paper: "The feathers fall off and we find them strewn around campus for days." Kinkaid answers with Mock the Mavs, in which its seniors tape their glasses and carry calculators, because St. John's has a reputation for being rigorous. That costume needs no favors. It needs a desk drawer.

By 2024 the borrowing ran in both directions. A St. John's Spirit Club captain told the paper, "I had five people who I don't really know text me and ask if they could wear my school uniform," for Kinkaid's own dress-like-St. John's day.

I tried this at home. Our rivals are the family across the street, who own a label maker and use it on the inside of drawers. To do them properly I needed a fleece vest from their actual closet. I had to knock. I had to explain. The father lent it to me, and asked what it was for, and I said a party, which was the first lie I have told a rival while wearing his clothes.

Tuesday is a day off for parent-teacher conferences. Wednesday is Camo Day. Over a weekend in 2023, a senior spent her Saturday afternoon, the paper reported, "sticking thin metal legs into plastic flamingos" so that carpoolers on Monday would meet a flamboyance of them in the bushes.

Friday is the game at Rice Stadium. The football teams first met in 1951. A Kinkaid history teacher who used to work at St. John's remembered the cheerleaders' pep-rally entrances there: "elephants, camels, Harley-Davidson's, police cars, and firetrucks. One year, they came in on a helicopter."

My costume got one laugh, from my wife. I returned the vest on Saturday, dry-cleaned, and only then saw what I had worn all week inside the collar: a small printed label with his name on it.