Fallen Catholic (continued)

Chapter 16: Good Nun, Bad Nun

One of my pet peeves with non-Catholics is the universally shitty image they have of nuns. I have been around a lot of them. Most of them were absolutely wonderful people. Some of them were radical liberals. Some were tough skinned conservatives. I only had one bad nun in all my years of Catholic education.

She was mean. She kinda looked like the wicked witch of the west. I don't know if one had anything to do with the other but she seemed to excel at criticizing children. If she wasn't scolding us for one thing, she was scolding us for another.

I had just transferred to a new school in the East end of Louisville and was used to being treated well by all my teachers. This one was impossible to warm up to. The year was 1963 and President Kennedy had just been assassinated. It was a few weeks before Christmas and we were putting on a Christmas play.

I was supposed to be the King of something or other. She was gathering us together, directing us, telling us when to enter stage, etc. She had told us to come on stage all together for the introduction, then everyone was supposed to get off the stage in preparation for the first act. She suddenly realized that I was supposed to be in place at the beginning of the first act so she told me that after the introduction, I should just stay put and wait for the first actor to enter.

Later that afternoon, when the parents got there, the play began, we were introduced and everybody left the stage right on cue. I stayed put as I had been told and waited for the actor to enter. Suddenly Sister Mary Nasty Bitch started waving wildly at me to get off the stage. I stood my ground, knowing that I was needed for the first act. She thought I was being obstinate, ran up and pushed me off the stage.

She began to rant at me and everything came to a halt. Then she realized that the play had come to a dead stop and said, “What is holding us up, people?” Then she realized what she had done, that I was in the wrong place, and pushed me back on the stage. She never apologized. She merely lamented, “Why can't you do as you're told, Rodney?”

What a bitch! She did me a great service because later in life I met a lot of people who were incapable of admitting their own mistakes. She was the first of a long line of arrogant idiots who loved to throw their weight around. But as a kid, as someone who had been nurtured by great, sweet Dominican nuns, it made me think I was a bad kid. I actually became depressed and avoided school. For the first time ever, I started making up excuses to miss school.

One day, after a long illness, I was helping one of my buddies with a Math problem. Sister Mary Nasty Bitch asked me how he was coming. I liked helping him so I told her he needed more help. She grabbed me by my ear and yanked me out of the classroom. “Are you trying to get out of working on your own?” She asked. I looked down at the floor.

“What is wrong with you, Rodney?”

I stood there trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I began to cry. I looked up at her, with tears in my eyes and said, “I never hated school before.” And with that, I began to sob.

It must have finally hit a chord in her stony heart because she stopped dead in her tracks. Instead of scolding me, she patted me on the head and told me to go back into the classroom.

Things were different after that. She actually began to smile occasionally. I hope it did her some good.