mrs-roboto's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Penance For An Uncovered Book - 5 Hail Mary's and 10 Our Fathers When people hear that you went to private, Catholic school they get the wrong idea. They imagine pristine facilities and top notch instructors. Perhaps they envision well press uniforms and children standing up tall and proud in a neatly ordered line. Maybe they even see you as snobbish or incredibly well versed in Latin. I'm here to destroy all of those notions. I attended Catholic school in the late seventies, all of the 1980's, and a year or two in the early nineties. I was enrolled in Catholic school not because my parents felt it would provide better opportunities for me later in life. They did not pay my tuition because they thought I would be exposed to a higher intellectual plane in this type of environment. They sent me to Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt because they feared what might happen in New York Cities schools. You see, the seventies and eighties were rough times in NY. The evening news ran one story after the next about how much "dope" was being "pushed" in public schools. I suppose we could thank Nancy Reagan for that. The media preached endlessly about gang violence and kids getting jumped in the halls. They talked about designer sneakers being removed at force from students bodies and then ran yet another story about students being force-fed drugs by their classmates. I think my parents had nightmares about a barefoot 'Lil Miss running home from the school yard her mouth stuffed full of lit joints (FYI to mom and dad, the only difference between private and public schools *is* the drugs - we had a much higher grade of cocaine at OLPG than at P.S. 92). So off to Catholic school I went. Let me tell you a little something about my grammar school - it was so ghetto. Imagine if you will a horrible brick structure built in the 1970's. It's square and Spaghetti-o orange with the prerequisite, oversized brass cross hanging off the front. It's situated between two busy four lane highways and the only patch of green grass is fenced off by a twelve foot tall chain link structure. The school yard is actually a parking lot and the teachers move their cars out of it for a half hour every day so kids can run around, fall down on the rock hard asphalt, and need immediate medical assistance. There are no nurses on site The interior is no better. All classrooms are avocado green, the color of A.D.D. Chalkboards have not been replaced since 1959 and have messages such as "Blacklist Commie Bastards" scratched into them. The American flags are filled with moth holes and the maintenance man's answer to cleaning up vomit is to coat it in a layer of sawdust. The nuns who taught us hadn't made any changes to their syllabus in roughly fifty years so we were still wondering who would win W.W.II. But the most upsetting and disgraceful part of this whole deal was the text books. I have never seen such crappy texts as those used at OLPG (although though the ones we got at OLPG the sequel, my high school, came pretty damn close on the crap-o-meter). These books were used year after year after year till they were not only falling apart but were completely outdated as well. Hell, the current events books we had were history texts by the time we got them. The opening panel contained the names of all the students who had come before you. Some dated back to 1958 and I didn't even start school till 1979. A favorite pass time of the students was to review the names from the prior year and rate your success amongst your peers accordingly. "Oh I got Geraldine McGuire's book! She's really popular and so I must popular by association!" "Darn it! I got Lori Martini's book and she has cooties. I'm totally going to catch her cooties." I have no clinical studies to back up the accuracy of these predictions. Ragtag texts with dozens of pages missing were distributed on the first day of school. Sister-I'll-Beat-You-With-A-Switch-If-You-So-Much-As-Look-At-Me would then insist that we immediately bring them home and cover them. Why you were covering a hardbacked book was a lot like the mystery of the Trinity. Maybe it had to do with modesty? Maybe it had to do with "graven" images? Who really knew? You didn't ask why, didn't question the great authority Sister-I'll-Beat-You-With-A-Switch-If-You-So-Much-As-Look-At-Me, AKA right hand man to God. You just believed and feared the wrath the Creator because if you didn't have What Would Jesus Do: A Book For All Who Don't Want To Burn In Hell covered by the time the morning bell rang, as Jasper on the Simpsons would say "that's a paddling." I have learned in the years since grammar school that stationary supply shops actually offer real book covers. They have this plasticized feel, detailed instructions on assembly, and cool images of your favorite cartoon characters or rock stars but please remember OLPG was ghetto. Book covers were simply brown grocery bags torn asunder and reconstituted in a cubic shape that looped over the outer hard covers. You were not allowed to use tape on your texts, so the folds had to be dead on in order to fit the book like a glove. The exterior of your book was then marked "Reading" or "Math" or "Useless Information Aimed At Making Me One With The Masses" in black magic marker. In this way, you became a better Christian. Somewhere a few weeks down the line, these paper bags would rebel pulling away from from books spine or seeking solace in the bottom of your school bag. Needless to say, this was unacceptable and if you were caught coverless you'd need to go to confession. The penance for an uncovered book - 5 Hail Mary's and 10 Our Fathers. If that didn't teach you to stop flaunting your naked Phonics book, nothing would. 8:37 p.m. - 2003-10-28 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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