Sunday, March 12, 2006
DRIVING THE NUNS NUTS
DRIVING THE NUNS NUTS
The Philly nuns of the 1950’s got the best of me to be sure. But when old chalk faced sister Euphemia from Saint Columbus parish in North Philly steered my face into a iron lamp post and laughed about it I decided I would take more of them down than could ever score off of me. I mean, I was in first grade for Christ sakes.
The absolute first day of first grade after the ringing of a gold bell that cost more than the row house I was living in, Sister Euphemia told me to hold hands with this other boy and get into line. I gave her a look like, ”yea right! I ain’t holdin hands wit no fat ass!” when she smacked me in the side of the head and said, ”Get that smirk off of your face!” I shrugged and said, ”This is my face”! She smacked the other side of my head. I was in first grade for Christ sakes!
I don’t know what effect those first two grades in an urban classroom with homicidal nuns had on my emotional development but by third grade when my homesteading parents moved to the suburbs I was basically an overmatch for any “lay teacher” and even most nuns. The only way they could effectively counter my cool sarcasm was to smack me in my junior wise guy face but I could take a hit. Man could I take a hit!
My reign of terror reached a high point in sixth grade when Sister Saint Purifica walked into a coed classroom containing sixty students. The very first day she was talking about the boys getting their pockets sewn shut if they didn’t keep their hands on top of the desk. I had no idea what she was talking about but I guess she did which in retrospect makes you wonder what with the celibacy vows and wedding ring to god, I mean just how frustrated were these women?
Purifica made another pitch that first day which had something to do with a strange noise that might come out of her every once in a while and that we shouldn’t worry about it that “Sister” would be o.k. “What kind of noise would that be,” I asked with my hand raised. “You just shut up, ”she said. “And get that other hand on top of your desk before I call your mother!”
There was a process of incidental education that occurred in the classroom but I only remember glossy pictures of fat women and the lingering stare of Madonna. I do remember that my friend Blub was recruited to the soft pretzel sales team that traveled the school each morning and that some trashy girl named Claire started giving boys the finger in class which elicited such excitement among the more precocious sexual animals that they ripped the thread loose from the sewn pockets of their black chinos.
Blub, by the way, gained 30 more pounds during three months of pretzel sales and was arrested for embezzlement after he tried to buy all of Elvis’s hits with a paper bag filled with nickels. Blub was indeed the devil’s handmaiden especially when his pockets weren’t sewn shut. I witnessed the “Blubster” perform the most sacrilegious behavior a Catholic boy was ever privileged to see without going blind or at least needing glasses.
Blub and I were kneeling at the side alter of the Virgin Mary at 8a.m.on a week day during 40 hours devotion standing guard over the body of Christ which was sealing inside a shining gold sunburst called a monstrance sitting on the main alter. There were several old people at our backs and we could tell the exact number by the interval of hacking coughs. We’d hear the back door open and shut and knew that the coughing choir had lost a member. By about 8:20 we were alone with the lord. “Jesus Christ I’m glad the old ladies left,” Blub said, sitting backwards on his kneeler. My goddam knees were becoming paralyzed. “
Blub walked over to the pulpit at Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church, turned on the microphone, and began a mock sermon.
“Today is the fifth Sunday after Pentecost whatever the hell that is and I just want to tell all the old people here this morning that you are going to die and it ain’t going to be pretty no matter how much you pray. But if you put all the money you own in the collection basket and give me the keys to your cars and houses I’ll see if I can get a few years knocked off your purgatory sentence. And forget that hunched over shuffle to the communion rail. Just send up your teeth in the collection basket and will stick a host inside the choppers. That will save a lot of time.”
I remained kneeling because of previous religious conditioning and I wasn’t laughing. I just knelt there in wide- eyed amazement having never seen anything so sacrilegious, not until Blub grabbed the monstrance and begged me to ring the chimes as he genuflected up and down. “Put that down or I’ll kick your ass, fat boy with a beard, ”I screamed! We heard a noise in the sacristy and Father Blub returned to his kneeler. It was only Father Murphy nipping from the alter carafe of Sherry wine. The Irish alcoholic never performed transubstantiation without a little buzz from the bottle.
The Sister Saint Purifica “Belch from Beelzebub” took about three weeks to begin its escape from her diaphragm and three minutes to escape her body completely. The class sat stunned for the first thirty seconds but after that it just became funnier and funnier. And I mean funnier like in weeks not minutes. “The devil had to be a comedian,” I thought. “What else was he going to do all day long?”
I liked Purifica well enough and in retrospect I imagine she was a tough old bird as the say at the Penguin Sister House. But we sixth graders were also prisoners of our own biology and the magnum burping behavior of hers just sent me into fits of laughter every time I heard it or even imagined hearing it.
Purifica lasted well into the winter months before her nervous breakdown but she was ready to flip at a moment’s notice.
If she was indeed onto something with this sewing the pockets shut and keeping hands on top of the desks behaviors, then certain words which could have double meaning to sixth graders should never have been used. “There’s one rubber (rubber?) boot left in the hallway,” Purifica said holding up a 1958 snow boot with all those metal latches and enough tread rubber to walk Mount Everest without a pickax. Nobody laid claim to the “booty.”
“You may be able to identify it by the little red ball imbedded in the soul.” She said, ”ball.” She should never have said, ”ball.” The class went nuts! And then came the behemoth of all “Burps from Beelzebub” which was cleverly mimicked by a “Burp from Beelzeblub” the monster of the monstrance. The devil was in the room, you could feel it from the blackboard to the clothes closet.
I turned to see trashy Claire making a face and giving me the finger. The ugly bitch! They could throw away all thread and sewing needles in the world if this was the best the opposite sex had to offer.
Purifica pushed out from the pandemonium of the room suffering from Penguin Panic Disorder. We got a new old nun for a teacher that used to be a principal at a Philadelphia City school. The first time Mother Martha looked at my smirking head she seemed to be asking, ”Will that be one lump or two.”
Actually it was several nodules beyond what was called for but I could take a hit! Two weeks later I stopped a brand new young nun in the hallway and asked her, ”Excuse me sister, but how’s Sisiter Purifica doing? “ The nun paused to reflect and then started laughing and so did I. I noticed that she was pretty. She was a pretty nun with a sense of humor? The devil was definitely in the house! Get out the needle and thread!
The Philly nuns of the 1950’s got the best of me to be sure. But when old chalk faced sister Euphemia from Saint Columbus parish in North Philly steered my face into a iron lamp post and laughed about it I decided I would take more of them down than could ever score off of me. I mean, I was in first grade for Christ sakes.
The absolute first day of first grade after the ringing of a gold bell that cost more than the row house I was living in, Sister Euphemia told me to hold hands with this other boy and get into line. I gave her a look like, ”yea right! I ain’t holdin hands wit no fat ass!” when she smacked me in the side of the head and said, ”Get that smirk off of your face!” I shrugged and said, ”This is my face”! She smacked the other side of my head. I was in first grade for Christ sakes!
I don’t know what effect those first two grades in an urban classroom with homicidal nuns had on my emotional development but by third grade when my homesteading parents moved to the suburbs I was basically an overmatch for any “lay teacher” and even most nuns. The only way they could effectively counter my cool sarcasm was to smack me in my junior wise guy face but I could take a hit. Man could I take a hit!
My reign of terror reached a high point in sixth grade when Sister Saint Purifica walked into a coed classroom containing sixty students. The very first day she was talking about the boys getting their pockets sewn shut if they didn’t keep their hands on top of the desk. I had no idea what she was talking about but I guess she did which in retrospect makes you wonder what with the celibacy vows and wedding ring to god, I mean just how frustrated were these women?
Purifica made another pitch that first day which had something to do with a strange noise that might come out of her every once in a while and that we shouldn’t worry about it that “Sister” would be o.k. “What kind of noise would that be,” I asked with my hand raised. “You just shut up, ”she said. “And get that other hand on top of your desk before I call your mother!”
There was a process of incidental education that occurred in the classroom but I only remember glossy pictures of fat women and the lingering stare of Madonna. I do remember that my friend Blub was recruited to the soft pretzel sales team that traveled the school each morning and that some trashy girl named Claire started giving boys the finger in class which elicited such excitement among the more precocious sexual animals that they ripped the thread loose from the sewn pockets of their black chinos.
Blub, by the way, gained 30 more pounds during three months of pretzel sales and was arrested for embezzlement after he tried to buy all of Elvis’s hits with a paper bag filled with nickels. Blub was indeed the devil’s handmaiden especially when his pockets weren’t sewn shut. I witnessed the “Blubster” perform the most sacrilegious behavior a Catholic boy was ever privileged to see without going blind or at least needing glasses.
Blub and I were kneeling at the side alter of the Virgin Mary at 8a.m.on a week day during 40 hours devotion standing guard over the body of Christ which was sealing inside a shining gold sunburst called a monstrance sitting on the main alter. There were several old people at our backs and we could tell the exact number by the interval of hacking coughs. We’d hear the back door open and shut and knew that the coughing choir had lost a member. By about 8:20 we were alone with the lord. “Jesus Christ I’m glad the old ladies left,” Blub said, sitting backwards on his kneeler. My goddam knees were becoming paralyzed. “
Blub walked over to the pulpit at Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church, turned on the microphone, and began a mock sermon.
“Today is the fifth Sunday after Pentecost whatever the hell that is and I just want to tell all the old people here this morning that you are going to die and it ain’t going to be pretty no matter how much you pray. But if you put all the money you own in the collection basket and give me the keys to your cars and houses I’ll see if I can get a few years knocked off your purgatory sentence. And forget that hunched over shuffle to the communion rail. Just send up your teeth in the collection basket and will stick a host inside the choppers. That will save a lot of time.”
I remained kneeling because of previous religious conditioning and I wasn’t laughing. I just knelt there in wide- eyed amazement having never seen anything so sacrilegious, not until Blub grabbed the monstrance and begged me to ring the chimes as he genuflected up and down. “Put that down or I’ll kick your ass, fat boy with a beard, ”I screamed! We heard a noise in the sacristy and Father Blub returned to his kneeler. It was only Father Murphy nipping from the alter carafe of Sherry wine. The Irish alcoholic never performed transubstantiation without a little buzz from the bottle.
The Sister Saint Purifica “Belch from Beelzebub” took about three weeks to begin its escape from her diaphragm and three minutes to escape her body completely. The class sat stunned for the first thirty seconds but after that it just became funnier and funnier. And I mean funnier like in weeks not minutes. “The devil had to be a comedian,” I thought. “What else was he going to do all day long?”
I liked Purifica well enough and in retrospect I imagine she was a tough old bird as the say at the Penguin Sister House. But we sixth graders were also prisoners of our own biology and the magnum burping behavior of hers just sent me into fits of laughter every time I heard it or even imagined hearing it.
Purifica lasted well into the winter months before her nervous breakdown but she was ready to flip at a moment’s notice.
If she was indeed onto something with this sewing the pockets shut and keeping hands on top of the desks behaviors, then certain words which could have double meaning to sixth graders should never have been used. “There’s one rubber (rubber?) boot left in the hallway,” Purifica said holding up a 1958 snow boot with all those metal latches and enough tread rubber to walk Mount Everest without a pickax. Nobody laid claim to the “booty.”
“You may be able to identify it by the little red ball imbedded in the soul.” She said, ”ball.” She should never have said, ”ball.” The class went nuts! And then came the behemoth of all “Burps from Beelzebub” which was cleverly mimicked by a “Burp from Beelzeblub” the monster of the monstrance. The devil was in the room, you could feel it from the blackboard to the clothes closet.
I turned to see trashy Claire making a face and giving me the finger. The ugly bitch! They could throw away all thread and sewing needles in the world if this was the best the opposite sex had to offer.
Purifica pushed out from the pandemonium of the room suffering from Penguin Panic Disorder. We got a new old nun for a teacher that used to be a principal at a Philadelphia City school. The first time Mother Martha looked at my smirking head she seemed to be asking, ”Will that be one lump or two.”
Actually it was several nodules beyond what was called for but I could take a hit! Two weeks later I stopped a brand new young nun in the hallway and asked her, ”Excuse me sister, but how’s Sisiter Purifica doing? “ The nun paused to reflect and then started laughing and so did I. I noticed that she was pretty. She was a pretty nun with a sense of humor? The devil was definitely in the house! Get out the needle and thread!
