Make the name tags big, REALLY BIG, OK?

Dana Bolles
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - I walked into a press conference two days ago and spotted, I thought, a woman who worked for a local radio station with whom I really needed to chat.

As I got close to her, the tiny name tag on her jacket fuzzed out (I can't see worth a damn up close) and, so I said hello Jenny, when in fact her name was Kathleen.

Wrong name, wrong person.

Merde! (See, I did learn some French in high school, thought 'merde' came from Phil Parks, who was several years ahead of us in high school and whose mother was French)

So this latest name tag debacle - and dream I had last night about our upcoming 40th reunion - prompted me to think that we better have REALLY BIG name tags or there will be a whole lot of goofy 'who the hell is that?' kind of looks being shot around the room.

Of course, in addition to that, we could ask people to comb their hair like they did in high school or maybe find a similar outfit to wear. Cheryl Towers had on kind of tennis sweater sort of thing. Or in Dana Bolles case, have him find a plaid jacket that comes close to what he wore in his yearbook photo.

I had one of those sportscoats, too, but mercifully when my mother pushed me out the door for school the day our photos were taken, she didn't make me wear it. I wasn't so lucky when I went to Villanova and my photos from that era - one of which I posted - are about as geeky as geeky gets. Thank God the photos are all in black and white. My plaid sportscoat was purple.

Purple. Jaysus.

Dana, by the way, has still not been located, though Randy Carlson found what he believes is a good address for him and mailed him an invitation. I seem to remember that Dana married Celeste Windoft, daughter of Byron, our American history teacher. And wasn't his dad, Harry, a referee at football games? I seem to remember Dana taking a lot of crap for that.

Dana was also a guitar player - that I remember for sure, and at one point was involved in radio.

In my dream last night, numerous women from our class were coming up and hugging me (it was dream, ok...) but I couldn't recognize any of them! As each one walked away, my wife would ask, 'And who was that?' in a voice that any husband in our class would recognize as the precursor to a full nuclear launch.

Name tags, amigos. BIG ONES?