Recalling???

Friday February fifteenth...such alliterative chances should not go unprinted.

I am trying to recall my early years in school. Grade 1 was sister Matilda, OSJ...Order of Saint Joseph...I think. She of the thick yardstick which she used to enforce discipline (as if grade one pupils needed DISCIPLINE). We sat in assigned seats in rows. Girls on the left hand side of the class closest to the door, boys i the rows to the right. I was third in the first row of boys which meant I had a girl to my right. But it also meant that I was in the row directly in front of Sister M's desk and therefore under constant scrutiny and ergo (latin for therefore) often caught passing notes to or from the girls side to the boys side. A CAPITAL offense in grade one.

I don't remember what I did but I do remember receiving a number of hits with the ruler (yardstick) across the palm for minor offenses and across the knuckles for more severe offenses whatever they might have been.
SADISM - was not a work in my vocab at that time!

Grade tw0 and three were combined. A non-nun...can't remember her name but I do remember she let me do multiplacation tables without having to check by means of division because I could always get them right??? Me and Math??? something fell by the wayside in the rest of my elementary years.

Grade 4 . By this time I was an alter boy and Hooks Nocoletta aka sister was in charge of grade 4 and the alter boy contingent. Hooks because she would constantly pick at your surplice to even it out . Surplice is the white, starched over garment that the alterboys wore over their cassocks...the long black robes. Any way, Hooks was okay as far as I can remember as long as you showed up for you altar assignments.

Grade 5. Sister Joan Marie...BTW they all had Mary or some derivitive as a part of their name...Mary Matilda , Mary Nicoletta, Joan Marie, etc. She was fresh out of the Novitiate where they brainwash the young ladies who seek to make jesus their spouse for life. She was not much older than some of the retards that were three or four years behind their age group. In those days you could fail a kid who didn't pass his exams and keep him or her back for a second or third year in the grade they failed. Not so anymore...too much damage to the psyche.

So what is all this to thee and to me... Not much!!!

I could tell you the story of how Bill (lnu) set fire to the display of cotton in the front of the room by shooting a match out of an empty spool. It hit the black board over the cotton field display on a table in the front of the room and caught fire. Sister JM ran for the door...only way out...and had to go past the blazing cotton batten. She told us to stay where we were and came back in after pulling the fire alarm with an extinguisher and put the fire out. By this time her wimple was askew and I learned that nuns had hair under their uniforms. DEVASTATING.

Grade 6 was my last year at Nativity BVM (aka blessed virgin mary) the nun in charge (name conveniently forgotten) was also the school principle or is that principal?? Enough of this nonsense for now.\