Manhattan Prep

The History of Manhattan College Preparatory High School (Manhattan Prep), Riverdale, the Bronx, New York, USA, a defunct organization since 1972 In 1972 the Prep was forced to close due to the largest alien abduction in Bronx history: the entire Senior class. Before leaving, the aliens jettisoned a septic tank. Analysis of the curious contents disclosed a diet seriously deficient in bile, lard, phlegm, spleen, vitriol and jaundice. The aliens, it seems, were simply looking for dietary supplements. Surviving Prep alumni (i.e., those who survived the knout, bastinado, and the garrote at the hands of the FSCs, q.v. elsewhere) live on a compound in Yakmuk, Mongolia making bamboo back-scratchers. Without their valuable work, we’d all have an itch we couldn’t scratch. They wear lime-green jodhpurs and madras jackets and subsist on tallow stew. During the harsh tundra nights, when pale Selene empearls the boreal blasts, the Jaspers (for that is what they call themselves; it is a rock of some sort; the name was picked because it symbolizes inertness) conserve body heat by coiling and roiling like earthworms in their communal burrow. On Mongolian holidays they watch beta tapes of The Monkees. I’m proud to have penned their fight song: By day we Prepsters hew and hack, For fun we lick the floors. If you scratch out matted backs With glee we’ll sure scratch yours! GO JASPERS! They gave me a year’s supply of kumiss and a time-share in the Great Yurt for that. They are ruled by THE PREPINATOR, the loathsome avatar of the Jasper Spirit: THE PREPINATOR! Evil’s dread light With darksome soul it roams the night Sturgeons tremble, oxen weep, Nomads cuddle; the night is deep. It howls: “Whither the Prep?” No answer! Silence grips the steppe. In 2003, in an eco-friendly gesture, they voted to opt out of the nitrogen cycle. Their current taxonomic status is unknown. Let no man umbrage feign Nor remedy seek to satire’s bane For this ‘tis mirth in the main!