a matter of principal.

Mr. Emory was the king of overused adages.

He'd come stumbling onto the PA system, telling us various announcements and that we should wash behind our ears and never give up our dreams. How can one stumble on a PA system? Frankly, I'm not sure either, but Mr. Emory managed it.

He used to speak at school functions, getting up and lecturing us on the value of a good education and a good football game. He used to be a football coach. There is no doubt in my mind that when he spoke to us, he pictured us all in complete football gear. He believed that there was no situation in life that did not call for a good football metaphor. Had he ever found otherwise, he would have lost the will to live.

He had these saying he would use, like the one that managed to pop up in our registration booklets. "Plan your work and work your plan." Really, he had several like that, where you say the same thing twice, switching it around the second time. Catchy, eh?

My favorite, though, had to be his attitude one. "Every morning, I get up and I look in the mirror and I say, 'God, give me gratitude, but not an attitude.'" Classic as this was by itself, it was made even better by Mr. Emory's stuttering. He'd get to the gratitude and attitude part, ended up getting the two switched and have to start over again.

Mr. Emory bumbled in general.

The most memorable event of his administration was the dress code debacle. It was determined at some point in my freshman year that the girls were being just a little too generous with the skin they were showing. The rule was that shorts were to be no shorter than a certain number of inches above the knee, how many I don't recall. Apparently, the female thigh was found to be "distracting" as the handbook put it. This rule, as with the rest of the dress code, was generally ignored except for extreme cases. You pretty much had to forego pants at all to get a dress code violation.

The Emory administration decided to put a stop to this and, get this, actually enforce the rules. They gave warnings over the announcements. They told the teachers to crack down. The assistant principal gained a rotten reputation with the students by stalking the halls with a tape measure around her neck, demanding girls let her measure the distance between their hems and their knees. I'm not sure if that was even true.

Finally, the powers that be were fed up. Mr. Emory came onto the PA system at the end of the day, stuttering through the announcement that girls were now banned from wearing shorts at all, effective immediately.

There was a general cry of outrage the next day. Actually, there was a female cry of outrage, as the boys just found it rather amusing. Petitions were passed around, citing sexism on the part of the administration, as the boys were allowed to wear whatever they wanted. There was a rule saying that pants were to be worn at the waist, but that again was pretty much ignored except for extreme cases. So the boys were home free. Some girls stayed home that first day, some showed up wearing their very best Nair shorts. I think they were sent home.

At the end of that day, exactly one day after the new policy was announced, Mr. Emory came on the intercom once more to tell us that the very same policy was now revoked. One day. He dismissed charges of sexism by saying "Girls are number one in my office!" giving us something to talk about the next day when we had nothing more to protest.

I haven't thought about the incident in years. I had trouble fitting the concept of dress code into my college brain, as we're allowed to be as naked as we want here. Now I find it all a little confusing. What was the point? Did he actually believe the dress code revision would fly, that he could get away with a school policy change in the middle of the year? I'm pretty sure that some parents would feel that their girls' only chance in this life was to be able to wear very tiny clothing, and I do know there were many parents complaints in that very brief short-less period. Or was he just trying to prove a point, assert his authority and then be satisfied that it was thoroughly asserted after 24 hours?

Who knows? That's just another eternal question that will go down next to the Bermuda Triangle, Amelia Earhart, and green ketchup.

A friend of mine went down to Myrtle Beach a few years ago and saw a poster calling for the election of Ed Emory as the Myrtle Beach mayor. He'd actually left the school after my freshman year, for whatever reason. I don't even know if he got elected mayor, but it does bring up some amusing possibilities, doesn't it? Banning all of Myrtle Beach, quite possibly South Carolina's nakedest town, from wearing bikinis, and giving long, football-riddled speeches at the opening of the new mall. I hope he did get elected, just because it would be funny.

Mr. Emory, he plans his work and works his plan.