Surviving Catholic High School

Freshman Year: Sister Charles Miriam

For even the aficionados (the grades 1-8 parochial school veterans), Catholic high school could be a bit of struggle. Girls were forced to kneel to ascertain whether their skirts were too short (they must touch the floor); at dances, couples were wedged apart by forearms and told to "leave room for the Holy Ghost." For public school rubes like me, however, to be thrust upon Our Ladies of Perpetuity at the age of fourteen was traumatic indeed.

I first realized the desperation of my plight when I attended my first study hall, monitored by Sister Charles Miriam. She was secretly called "Chuck," and she was beefy indeed. The studies, of course, were silent, but to me, "silent" meant, "quiet."

I needed a pencil. I didn't carry a 3-ring binder with a zippered plastic sleeve containing 34 pencils, 26 pens, 12 compasses, 6 protractors, and a box of paper hole reinforcements like the real parochials. Remember those rulers with holes? They had 'em, snapped tidily into those notebooks. In the next bolted-to-the-floor seat was a new classmate and potential friend, Joe Fontana. He was a parochial veteran; I knew he'd have pencils to share.

"Joe," I whispered, "got a pencil?" A look came over him that I have since seen only on the face of a woman giving birth.

"Shhhhhh," he hissed.

"C'mon, Joe," I persisted, a bit more loudly. "Just a friggen' pencil. You got a dozen of them in there." I was shushed again. I couldn't believe his stinginess. I begged. I cajoled. I wouldn't let up.

"You're gonna get us in big trouble," he whined. "Chuck doesn't allow--"

"MISTER Fontana-boy!" It was Chuck, looming above us, brandishing a yardstick. "Apparently you think you are IMMUNE to the rules of this classroom."

"I'm sorry, Sister." By his tone, he had abandoned all hope.

"ON YOUR KNEES!" she demanded.

Joe kneeled by the side of his desk. I thought I knew what was going to happen. Joe was going to have to pray for forgiveness for whispering in study hall. I was incredulous.

Except that wasn't what happened. Instead, the good sister, shod in laced black boots worn only by nuns and the occasional dominatrix, kicked poor, innocent Joe in the buttocks. Three times. In front of a whole class. Her Rosary beads made a clacking sound each time she swung her foot.

Joe and I never really became friends after that. With nothing to lose, during junior year, I tried to steal his girlfriend. But that is another story.

Sophomore Year: Sister Charles Albertine

By sophomore year, I'd become much savvier in dealing with the nuns. They were utterly predictable, calling on you in class in alphabetical order up and down the rows. Math was putting the homework problems on the board; French was doing substitution exercises based on those ridiculous ALM dialogues. Mon Dieu! History was listening to the coach talk football, when he showed up at all.

The only problem was English, and that was because I wanted to like English. It was taught by Sister Charles Albertine, who was called "Charlie" to differentiate her from the aforementioned Chuck. Charlie was of indeterminate age but was well into the doddering stage. Class consisted of our reading passages of books out loud, and then--we can all say it together--"Do the questions at the end of the chapter."

 Charlie was so offended by our phlegmatic rendition of Julius Caesar that she made our one grandiloquent reader, an intensely serious student named Jerry, read the entire final four acts. She was an inveterate user of maxims and cliches, and always seemed disappointed when her pearls of wisdom caused our eyes to glaze over. "A little learning is a dangerous thing," she would say, and John McGregor would try but fail to stifle a yawn. Halfway through "If at first you don't succeed," Dave Wilson's head would hit the desk with a resounding thud.

Charlie generally arrived for class about one-third of the way through the allotted time. On one memorable day, she actually arrived before the bell  announcing the start of class. Thinking it was the bell to end the class, she harrumphed, "Read the next chapter for homework" and left the room.

However, Charlie would have her moment of glory. A strange quirk of fate would bring her the resounding approval that I suspect she had sought throughout her career.

One spring morning, we arrived in class to find a substitute teacher. She explained that Sister had had an accident; she had caught her hand in the convent garage door and broken a finger.

Charlie returned to class a few days later. On her right hand, splinted hugely, gloriously, magnificently, was her middle finger. It didn't take long. Returning a set of papers, she held up a less than erudite effort from Mac . "Mr. McGregor-boy," she deadpanned. "Your paper stands out"--we could feel it coming--"like a sore finger!" She threw up the brightly bandaged, splinted middle digit with the enthusiasm of a New York cabbie.

The result was immediate. The class responded as one, roaring its approval of this apt gesture. Charle was initially taken aback by the reaction, but she was soon grinning broadly. She had broken through. From that point on, Charlie took every opportunity to seek out any slight anomaly that could invoke the comparison. "That stands out," she would say, and the class would chorus, "like a sooooore finger!" She would ecstatically brandish the exalted digit that had transformed us. It became our mantra; even Jerry joined in.

Charlie retired at the end of that school year. She never knew.

Junior Year: Sister Julia Thomas

The Sisters of Charity had a logo on the book covers that we were required to buy for one dollar apiece. The logo was blurry, but it seemed to depict a large bird. When I asked about it, I was told that the logo consisted of a mother pelican, tearing out bits of her own flesh to feed her fledglings in time of famine. Eucharistic interpretations aside, the nuns apparently viewed their teaching vocations as being similarly sacrificial.

I had Sister Julia Thomas for homeroom that year. She was neither as cruel as Chuck nor as senile as Charlie. She did, however, adhere to the "Don't smile until after Christmas" precept that was gospel among her order. Her downfall would prove to be her physical appearance.

Sister was of medium height, but had a large, rounded torso encased in the black habit. She had a small head that seemed to be mounted too far forward and seemed to bob as she walked; a wattle hung under her chin. Her complexion was florid, and became more so when she was agitated. She had an odd way of cocking her head as she peered over the top of her reading glasses. I suppose it was inevitable someone would notice the resemblance. Thanksgiving was approaching, and it had been only a couple of years since Little Eva's hit, "C'mon, Let's Turkey Trot."

Sister was on my side of the room, scolding already nervous Joe O'Connell (who would later become a lawyer) the first time it happened. A sound ululated from the other side of the room. The source was unknown (there were several likely suspects), but the sound was unmistakable: A gobble. Sister trotted across the room (Little Eva would have been impressed) to apprehend the culprit. As she arrived at the far side, however, from behind me came an answering gobble. As she lurched back toward our side, a gaggle of gobblers answered from the area of the original miscrea
The gobbling went on for weeks. Too embarrassed to seek disciplinary assistance, Sister was never able to isolate any one perpetrator--gobbling can be accomplished by moving only the tongue. I never did join in the gobblefest, but to be honest, it was probably because my participation would have offended Mary, the girl I was trying to steal from Joe Fontana.

I do remember that the incident left me vaguely disquieted, though, and now so many years later I understand why. The cruelty was coming from us, now. Did that mean that we had won? Or that we had lost?

Senior Year--Father Daniel Moran

By senior year an unspoken covenant had formed between staff and students. There would be no more capricious punishments allotted, nor any gratuitous baiting of the teachers. Our attention was diverted to prospects after graduation. Looming ominously in the future was the possibility of being diverted to Southeast Asia.

I finally had a good English teacher that year, although ironically I cannot recall her name. She frequently praised my writing, a phenomenon that had not occurred during my first three years. We did have one major disagreement, though. The class was reading a story that mentioned going on a "snipe hunt." Sister explained to us that there was no such thing as a snipe--the phrase referred to an impossible task. I explained to Sister that there was indeed such a thing as a snipe, that it was a large long-billed bird. I even opened a dictionary and offered to show her a drawing. As a result of my helpfulness, I became persona non grata in the class for about two weeks.

The figure who emerged as the most influential was Father Daniel Moran, the school's Spiritual Advisor. I'd known "Dan the Man" previously from mandatory Masses in the school chapel before football games. It did occur to me that our opponents were simultaneously praying for the opposite result, but I managed to keep my mouth shut--for once.

Father Moran was a balding, soft-spoken man, with a hesitant, unsure manner. He reminded me a bit of Tim Conway. He should have been grist for the mill for some of the formidable nuns under his charge, but instead, his station as a priest gave him infallible status among them. They practically kowtowed when he walked by.

A persistant and borderline-sacrilegious practical joke plagued Father Moran throughout our senior year. On the first Friday of every month, we attended Mass in the auditorium. On the way in, students who wanted to receive communion were supposed to take a wafer from a basket and put it in a vessel called a "suborium." Someone was instead contributing a fistful of wafers despite the best efforts of Sisterly reconnaissance. Vatican II had turned the priests around to face the congregation, so we all saw the expression on Father Mahon's face when he'd return to the altar and discover he still had 50 or 60 consubstantiated hosts left. With no tabernacle to store them, he had to consume them, one at a time. The process took as long as 20 minutes.

Father Mahon was an innately gentle man, but major issues of school discipline fell under his jurisdiction. His warnings were always more impressive than his reactions. Before school events, he would summon potential miscreants to his office. "Any trouble, Gentlemen," he would say, "and the fur will fly." I, of course, heard these warnings only second-hand.

His major test came during the senior retreat. There had been rumors that some of the boys were planning to seek their inner selves through the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol. After dinner on the second day of the retreat, Dan the Man addressed the assemblage. "If you'd had one sip of beer," he admonished us, "I'd have known as you walked through that door." The twenty or thirty young men in various stages of drunkenness rose as one to applaud. Father Moran smiled blissfully.

The fur never flew.