Speaking of Nuns.....

Contemporaries of mine who are products of a Catholic education were more than likely taught by Nuns; at the least, all of you have very strong Nun recollections, and most have more than a few good Nun stories. Some of the stories would involve acts of faith, kindness and charity; most would be stories of brutality, physical and mental abuse and in some cases, incidences of sadistic torture.

In spite of the irreverence and blasphemy that will follow, know that my recollections are borne from admiration and respect, for at the core of these Nun’s daily reign of terror was their heartfelt desire to transform us from slovenly, unappreciative little pagan babies into educated, unquestionably committed Roman Catholics – with the ultimate goal being our individual quest for Sainthood; nothing less was acceptable. In 1962, in Johnson County, KS, at Cure of Ars’ Parish School, we were taught to believe that Sainthood was attainable – it was all up to us.

I blew my chance at Sainthood early on, in the spring of my 2nd Grade year. I’d recently been blessed with God’s Grace, having confessed my sins to that point of my life, and then having taken my First Holy Communion. To those of you who aren’t Catholic and haven’t experienced this physical and spiritual transformation, as 7-year olds, we took this Sacrament, this Holy ritual, deadly serious, and for most Catholics, the seriousness of the ritual doesn’t diminish with age. Though as a newly Catholicized 7-year old, there was a bit more at stake with keeping up my end of the bargain with regards to being good, being Christian – I still at that time had Sainthood in my sights.

My 2nd grade fall from grace started with a lie – a big, spur-of-the-moment whopper; a lie that I still to this day am uncertain as to source of its summonance. It ended with the heretofore kind, reasoning, patient and all-knowing Sister Mary Joseph, Principal of Cure of Ars Parish School, kicking me square in the ass soccer-style, (way ahead of her time!) with the force of an NFL kicker going for a 65-yard field goal; jettisoning me out of her office and into the hall, tumbling once, twice…probably three times, head over heels. I knew at the end of the second tumble that my chance at Sainthood was shot, and it’s been downhill for me ever since.

It was a sunny spring day, lunchtime recess; the mid-day break consisting of twenty minutes to eat your lunch (which you ate in six minutes and fidgeted for the next fourteen minutes), and forty minutes out on the playground. On this particular day, I was treated in my lunch to a box of Cracker Jacks – which of course, in addition to caramel coated popcorn and peanuts, came with a ‘prize in every box’. My prize was a small, plastic magnifying glass. The lens was maybe ½” in diameter and the whole thing might have been 1 ½” long; with my current old man vision, I would need a big magnifying glass to even see this magnifying glass. Anyway, it was a prize, and I found myself absent-mindedly standing in the warm spring sun, farting around with it on the playground.

Were this a film, you would see me in a long shot; a sweet, innocent blond-haired little guy standing on the playground, minding his own business, and then, the soundtrack would begin playing something not unlike the theme from Jaws, as unaware to me, the class fat kid/bully was waddling his way towards me from behind. Totally unannounced, the ogre whammed me in the back, his two fat paws simultaneously colliding with my two shoulder blades, sending me face first towards the pavement; in short, the fat bastard walked up behind me and without provocation pushed me to the ground. With cat-quick reflexes I shot my arms forward in time to prevent myself from falling face-first, but the downside result of this nanosecond reflexive act of facial self-preservation was the loss of the little magnifying glass, as it flew from my hands and was never to be seen again.

I didn’t cry, but was on the verge of crying; I was for a fact pissed and quickly decided that this fat jackass had to have some payback. Unfortunately none of the Nuns or teachers who had playground duty witnessed this wanton act of aggression, and I didn’t feel that much would happen to him if I ratted him out for simply pushing me to the ground, so I decided, as I walked towards one of the teachers, angry and wounded, to sweeten the pot a little. This pot-sweetening would require that I lie.

“Mrs. Daly, Claude Oafbutt pushed me and when I hit the ground, I....I...I lost my contact lenses!”

I had no idea what contact lenses were, I just knew that they were small, expensive and hard to find when lost. Seems I saw something about this on TV the evening before.

Mrs. Daly instantly sprang into action, blowing her whistle and herding all of the other kids away from the scene of the crime. She cleared out an area that was about 200 square feet, and instructed everyone to stand back.

“Where did you fall?” she asked, panicked, all but breathless.

“Uh… right over there.” I pointed in a direction but to no spot in particular.

In short order, there were six Nuns on the spot, getting the lowdown from Mrs. Daly. Before my very eyes, and the eyes of the entire grades 1-8 recess crowd, the Nuns got down on their hands and knees and slowly began crawling in the cordoned-off area, their noses inches from the pavement as they scanned the ground; like a huddle of arctic penguins searching the desert sands for ice cubes, they diligently poured over every inch of the playground, looking in vain for something that, like ice in the desert, never existed.

I didn’t cuss at that tender age, especially having just made my First Holy Communion, but I knew the sight that lay before me caused me to mutter under my breath something very close to “Holy Shit, what have I got going on here, and how am I gonna get my ass out of it?” Even at that tender age, I knew that if you caused a Nun to crawl around on the playground,in her habit on her hands and knees because you lied, there would be unimaginably huge repercussions. HUGE!

Enter Sister Mary Joseph, Principal of Cure of Ars.

After getting the skinny from Mrs. Daly, she turned and headed slowly over to me.

“Richard, I’m very sorry this has happened, but we don’t seem to be able to find your lenses. Could there be a chance that you left them at your desk, or in the bathroom?”

“Uh, nope, I’m pretty sure I had ‘em on when I came out here.” Another lie.

“Well….maybe we should go inside and have a look, just to make sure. Don’t you think?”

So I followed Sister Mary Joseph into the empty school, down the hall and towards my classroom, knowing with every step that I was a dead kid walkin’.

Standing me before my desk, Sister asked “How about your pencil box, can you look in there for me?”

I pulled out my cigar-box, which held pencils, crayons, erasers – stuff that we used to write with before we had computers. I opened the lid and slowly fished around among the contents, thinking, hoping and praying that maybe I actually had contact lenses; ‘By Golly Sister! Here they are right here! How lucky was that?’

Instead, of course, I said “No Sister, I can’t find them in here…”

“Let’s go look in the bathroom. Maybe you left them in there.”

“Yeah… maybe I left them in there…..” I said, barely audible as we headed down the hall to look one more place for my fictional lenses. I think I remember starting to pray a bit harder at this point.

Needless to say, neither did I score the non-existent lenses in the bathroom.

Back up in the school office, Sister had me sit while she called home to give my Mom the bad news.

“Mrs. Paradise, this is Sister Mary Joseph at Cure….no, no…your children are all fine. But we do have a small problem. It seems that Richard lost his contact lenses on the playground during recess and….(my Mother became very audible on the other end of the phone, and although not intelligible, I knew exactly what she was saying)….Oh really. Is that so? I see….Yes, I’d be happy to let you talk to Richard.”

“Hullo?”

“What in the world are you doing?? What in God’s Name are you thinking?? Contact lenses?? What on earth are you talking about??” She was yelling these questions at me pretty loudly. She had probably been leisurely ironing my Dad’s handkerchiefs, thinking about what she was going to cook for dinner that evening, and then this call comes in!

“You know Mom….those contact lenses I had. I lost them when Claude Oafbutt pushed me for no reason...sniff…and I scraped my hands and knees…sniff…and it hurts really bad…..sniff….” I started to whimper a little, hoping the tears might allow me to buy some sympathy, but Mom didn’t have any sympathy for sale.

I handed the phone to Sister, my head down, waiting for God knows what to come. I’d seen Nuns draw and quarter kids for snickering in the bathroom line; I couldn’t imagine the hell that awaited me from the Head Knucklebuster for this infraction. I assumed she got the top position because she could out-sadist all of the other sadists, and I’d done some really bad stuff; stuff that would test her mettle as an administrator of punishment.

To my immediate surprise, all I got was a stern look and an outstretched arm, finger pointing down the hall as she hissed “Back to your classroom… young man!…”

Just as I was walking out the door, starting to think “Wow, that wasn’t so bad”, Sister Mary Joseph made her attempt at putting her name in the NFL record books.

As I lay dazed on the other end of the hall, I recall hearing one of the other Nuns in the office say something like “Excellent form Sister, and what solid follow-thru! And did I count three tumbles???"”

Sister Mary Joseph coolly nodded her head, wordlessly acknowledging the compliment, then said “Sister Ann.... go get the tape measure.”

At the end of the ordeal, Sister Mary Joseph was immortalized in the Official Record Book of Nun Brutality for ‘Longest Distance Kicked with Accompanied Somersaults, male, less than 60 lbs – 13 feet, 8 inches, 3 tumbles.’; all I got out of the deal was an early exit from the Sainthood sweepstakes.