Each class at Wellesley College is designated a color: red, green, purple, or yellow. Your class color becomes an important part of your Wellesley identity. It defines your Junior Show theme, your class cheers, if you scream certain phrases while singing America the Beautiful (which was written by a Wellesley alum) (amber waves of grain or purple mountains majesty). My class was, as the T-shirts we received our first day at Wellesley said, "Golden". There was a contest each year for the incoming class slogan. Other classes had shirts that read "Simply mauvelous" and "Reddy willing and able". I never met a first year slogan shirt that I liked. But it is a nice welcoming gesture, and it gives you something to wear to stepsinging if you don't own anything in your class color.

We had a T-shirt painting study break during finals one semester and I painted things (mostly words) onto my class shirt. My standard response to odd happenings at the time was "Life is funny and people are strange." I put that prominently on the back. Above it are "MITSO", standing for MIT Symphony Orchestra, which took up my Tuesday and Thursday nights, "CMS" for Chamber Music Society (Wednesday nights), and "WCO" for Wellesley College Orchestra (Monday nights). Also on the back are my two faves: "Late Night w/David Letterman" and my perfected rendering of David Bowie's logo from the Let's Dance album. Once I was wearing this shirt on a shopping trip in Boston and the friend I was with said "Do you realize you're wearing around a shirt that has `Life is funny and people are strange' written on it?" I replied "Yeah. So what?"

This T-shirt actually has two stories behind it. The original shirt, which you will see if you turn it inside out, is a "failed" T-shirt from my class. It is a drawing of a Wellesley Gold Card, like the American Express one, issued to "Wendy Wellesley", which is the name we used for the stereotypical Wellesley student (hair bow and pearls). The slogan on the back reads "Membership has its privileges". Some members of our class complained that the shirt design was too elitist and put out the wrong message about our class and its purpose. Our class officers didn't agree with that assessment, but they stopped selling the T-shirt anyway, saying they didn't mean to offend anyone.

Every year the junior class produces a musical. A group of students goes away together for a few days before the school year begins and writes it. They are know as the Cape Committee because the group used to go to Cape Cod, but that became too expensive after a while, though the name stuck. Members still make capes to wear around campus during the show's run. Cape Committee was a real blast. We went off to the DeSisto School in the Berkshires, which was owned by a relative of our class dean, and were wined and dined while we composed, reposed, and supposed a show that would break the usual dull boundaries of a parody of life at Wellesley. We came up with something unusual, which few classes had attempted, a show that didn't even take place at Wellesley, except for two scenes. The plot had little to do with college life, but still had a slew of the necessary references to things yellow, and a multitude of in-jokes put into a new context. Its theme, however, definitely sprang from Wellesley ties: sisterhood. The story revolved around two twins, separated at birth, and their respective, disparate upbringings. There were also some gangsters in there, and a dotty old woman who enjoyed martinis. I won't assault you with all the hideous yellow puns we came up with. Suffice to say that one of the twins dated a man named John Dice, worked at a beauty parlor called the Lemon Bouffant, sang at a club called the 'Lectrik Banana, and her name was Amber Ochre. She was the one that didn't go to Wellesley.

Cape Committee, of course, had to have its own T-shirt, in addition to yellow capes. Since we were frugal, we made our capes out of yellow sheets, and painted our own T-shirts using the ones that had been discarded from the unsuccessful class shirt sale. Each of us made our own design, but we all had a shirt with that distinctive painted style. We ran out of our assortment of yellow paint really quickly.

The official junior show T-shirt shows a dolls head on front and a dolls body on back with the ending line of the show "I always knew there was a head to my body" and "I always knew there was a body to my head" (the actual lines in the show use the word "for" instead of "to"). The two twins each have half of a doll when they are separated. Yeah, it was corny and it was cheesy (the posters said so). But we thought it was hilarious. And we were praised for coming up with the most original show in years. The senior class heckles heavily during the show. They are led by their Cape Committee, who get to come to the last dress rehearsal to take notes in preparation. After the curtain fell on our opening night, the Cape Committee from the previous year came backstage, their purple robes flowing behind them, to tell us that we had done a super job, and they had truly enjoyed our creativity. We were elated. And the following year we had a great time heckling at the next junior show. It wasn't half as good as ours. And their Cape Committee didn't even have capes! But I must admit their T-shirts were nice. I always did like red better than yellow.

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