Freddogg Off The Chain

Never ask for sympathy from devils especially if you’re an old nun teaching sixth grade in 1956. Sister Purifica looked mean just like the rest of them and I was sure she had every intention of smacking me around just like the other Immaculate Hearts at Our Lady of Grace Grammar school. I just knew that was the way it would go but because of my combat experience I was the slap happy kid and I could take any amount of insults and ridicule “Purificow” had in store for me but I’m not so sure she was up to the battle.

The first day of class threw me off as Sister rambled on about how she had a medical problem she couldn’t help but we shouldn’t worry about it and it was nothing to be afraid of. “I just make this little noise, ”she said. “But don’t be alarmed. I’m o.k.”

I looked around the room that was totally non-attentive and hadn’t heard a word she said. I scribbled in the front of my composition notebook. Makes little noise? Don’t be alarmed? I am alarmed. What is wrong with this beast?

Fall rolled into winter and everyday I made a notation “Where’s the noise?” I was not desensitized. I would be ready to imprint the experience which has always been what I do. I snap shot behaviors, freeze them, then thaw images out later in my life as necessary. This memory is downright cryogenic.

I remember having long wet hair that I could pull down the front of my face until it touched my chin. I was a speed skater and a dam good one for the Mammoth Casino Red Devils. I drank Near Bear. Think of the baggy pants obnoxious skateboarders of the new millennium. I was a much bigger jerk than any of those posers.

The end of school on a snowy day all us low middle class Catholic losers had worn rubber boots that buckled in the front. The hallways were filled with them. We all got our boots, put them on and were ready to go home but Purifica stood in the doorway holding up a single extra boot. “How is it that there is one unclaimed boot, ”she asked. “Will you all check to make sure you’re wearing two boots.”

I thought of the third boot trick all on my own not bad for a 12 year old. But I never anticipated what happened next. “This boot has no special markings except for a little red ball on the bottom, ”Sister said.

‘That was it, the class went NIKE Intercontinental Ballistic Missile into inappropriate behaviors. Back in 1956, a harsh nun just didn’t drop a “ball” on a class of sixth graders. They were laughing and pointing at her. “She said Ball”! I dropped my head and mumbled “this is just way wrong." Sister was absent the next two days and I knew by instinct she was on her way to the nervous breakdown ward and 50 years later no one yet understands what that means.

Sister keep me after class one day and told me I would look so much better if I cut my hair and went back to wearing the Italian Pete the Barber Regular or the Marion the Hungarian refuge high back. She said if I cut my hair she’d give me a special present.

I was curious and only 12 so I went for the haircut. Sister kept her promise and gave me a white caste religious statue of the blessed mother holding the baby Jesus. “Mary loves you,” she said. “Never forget that.”

It wasn’t the theology and that whole far fetched Immaculate Conception thing that I had questioned like a 12 year old Bertrand Russell. It was the sincerity of the Sister who had given me something I could look at for strength, a sort of Blessed Mother Mojo.

It was close to Christmas and my composition book was filled with “the noise is coming” notes. And one morning during the reading of the catechism it came. It was like a prolonged amplified burp pumped by a Sansui receiver through the woofers of a Bose speaker system. It was equal in length to the long version of Light My Fire. Sister’s eyes were frozen and not blinking, like a seizure. It was like a brain burp. Turrets burping, sometimes the body does what it wants and doesn’t ask us for permission.

I was stunned how badly the class reacted. They were all burping and ridiculing this poor woman, the one who told me “Mary Loves You.” I could stay in any fight if it was personal but never had enthusiasm for piling on chicken shit behaviors. Sister didn't deserve it and I didn't like it.

Purifica ran from the room and I never saw her again. Amazingly I was on a “Wanted Poster” at the convent because of the third boot trick. Those nuns never understood I was one of her final success stories.

My final two years at Our Lady of Grace it was payback for me from The Immaculate Hearts of Mary nuns for sending Purifica to the nervous hospital. The could have hooked me up with a couple of statutes and saved themselves a crooked number in the loss column. And Mary does love me becuase I'm her boy!

Peace Father Freddogg