Who Named My School PMS?

This past weekend, Mary Lea and I were on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in Biloxi.  While we were there, we ran by the local Target to buy Mary Lea's drug, Diet Pepsi.  On the way from Target's entry to the soft drink aisle, I passed a mother who had on a red t-shirt with the lettering BJHS (Biloxi Jr. High School) emblazoned across the front of her shirt in white lettering.  For some reason, the BJ in BJHS just jumped out at me.  I thought to myself, "they should rename that school".  Certainly there has to be a better name than BJHS.  Perhaps they should name it Biloxi Middle School but then that is BMS and with the "mind in the gutter" that I apparently had that day, the BM part of that acronym just wouldn't work.

Acronyms sometimes spell things that perhaps you would rather they not.  In South Carolina, Furman College (F.C.) became Furman University or F.U.  I visited there a couple of years ago and bought a purple t-shirt that had in big bold letters, "F U" and then written smaller, "Furman University".  It seemed great at the time and then I made my way home and found that sporting around Clinton, Mississippi with a F U t-shirt might not be the best thing.

I am sure that there are many more embarrassing acronyms but the one that really gets me is the one for my old junior high.

When I attended Peeples Jr. High, at the end of each pep rally, the band would stand on the gym floor and loudly play our fight song.  I don't remember any of the words to the song except at the very end when the student body would join in.  It was then in unison that a frenzied group of jr. high students would shout out, "It's P-J-H!!"

Now, the school has been renamed.  It is now Peeples Middle  School.  I am not sure how many of the traditions of the early 1970's exist at Peeples in 2012, but I have to wonder if at the end of each pep rally, if the band plays the fight song and they loudly cheer, "It's P-M-S!!"  I certainly hope not.