In 1985, I hopped on mass transit for nearly four hours daily to attend Central High, a public magnet school founded in 1836. Many cities have a Central High School, but only ours can boast the ability to confer a bachelor’s degree to qualified students. Girls won the right to attend the previously all-male school two years before I arrived, and during my freshman year, someone had placed artificial flowers in the urinals that hung briefly in the girls’ restrooms until reconstruction could be completed. After school, my friends and I headed to South Street’s record stores, the Book Trader, and Zipperhead clothing shop, which contributed to the area’s punk subculture that thrived before chain stores emerged. The Central button you see denotes my graduating class number (248), made possible because the school graduated two classes per year for many decades. Thank you for reading my story!