Sometime the teacher in the classroom is a few bricks shy of a load. Bat-shit crazy is not always limited to the shooter or the students!
One of the more unstable nuns in my sordid Catholic School past taught us music and art at St. Leo’s in 4th Grade (1971-1972). Let’s just refer to her as Sister JE. Quick refresher: At the school I attended, McNelis Catholic, due to large enrollment, we used the school building across from The Cathedral for Grades 1-3 and 7-8. For grades 4-6, you went to St. Leo’s up on the hill about 7 or 8 blocks down 13th Ave. Sister JE’s order was the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill, one of the celestial farm teams that would feed nuns into the Catholic school system in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese.
I believe that we were the first class Sister JE taught at McNelis Catholic. If this wasn’t her first stint at McNelis, then there was some serious breakdown in our “Teacher Alert System” - that informal network of siblings and older friends that we relied on to give us early warnings and best practices for dealing with that upcoming year’s Crazy-Ass Nun. We were all blind-sided by the Sister JE Crazy Train bearing down on us.
“Your Crazy-Ass Nun Terror Alert Level is Orange. At this level, your Crazy-Ass Nun appears to be angry at the world, is prone to irrational and emotional outbursts, and is incapable of exhibiting even the tiniest levels of patience, understanding, love, or humanity. Please be aware that at this level, your Crazy-Ass Nun may wrap knuckles with rulers, may dump desks, and may initiate Head-Slaps.”
In 1971-72 at St Leo’s, Sister JE spent pretty much the entire year at Terror Alert Level Orange – except for one week in December, when she upped her game to Terror Alert Level Red. In that week, we were preparing for a Christmas Show that all the grades would put on for our parents and other family members before holiday break. The show would be held on the stage located in the back of the tiny St. Leo’s cafeteria.
Perhaps Sister JE was feeling some pressure to get the show ready in time, maybe we were all screwing up, or maybe she was just doing what came natural, but she was raging and ragging (metaphorically, I guess?) on us all week. I felt her physical wrath once that week and, trust me, I wasn’t the only one in our class.
There is such a wide range in the innate musical/artistic talent level of a large group of young students. Usually, as a student, you could at least “get by” by just putting in an honest effort in those subjects. You know, try to sing to the best of your ability and turn in all the art assignments, no matter how lame the results. That is as it should be, of course. Most teachers that are not bat-shit crazy would approach teaching those subjects with that sort of pragmatism. Some of those nuns, though, Jesus, they could just play some serious mind games with you.
On Facebook, one of my former classmates, Lisa, was recalling a music rehearsal in which she was just singing all out - really putting her total heart and soul into it. So naturally, one of the Crazy-Ass Nuns sneaks up behind Lisa and suggests, via a whisper in the ear, that she should “just lip sync”. Amazing. If you step back and think about it a bit, that is just so cold – on so many levels. Some of those nuns were just soul-crushing, joy-sapping, natural born spirit assassins – they should have never been within ten feet of impressionable children, let alone entrusted to “teach” them. All so Rome could save a couple of bucks on labor costs.
When Sister JE got physical with Your Faithful Servant during “Hell Week” in 1971, I had made the mistake of daydreaming during music class, for just an instance, and had temporarily lost track of which song and verse we were on. These were some new songs, so I couldn’t rely on memory and wing it. We were following along with the lyrics (sitting at our desks) using copies that were made from those mimeograph copying machines – you know the ones that produced copies with that addictive ink smell. The print quality of the copies produced by those machines sucked BTW.
While we were singing, Sister JE was roaming the classroom (like a vulture), walking up and down the aisles. So, while I was scrambling to get my bearings back to the right song/verse from my daydream, I stopped singing – couldn’t have been for more than one and one-half lines of verse. When Sister JE was raging, it was in your best interest to know where she was “on the field” – in the same way that a wide receiver on a crossing pattern keeps an eye out for a game-changing psychotic like James Harrison.
Using my peripheral vision, I was aware that Sister JE was roaming somewhere behind me, so i thought my momentary lapse of musical effort was safely covered up. No harm, no foul, right? But alas, right as I recovered and resumed singing, she closed on me from behind like Troy Polamalu, smacked me flush on the side of the head above the ear with an open hand, and roared “Sing!” at me. Yes, I got pimp-slapped by Sister JE at the age of of nine.
You used to get the slap-upside-the-head a lot in those days. Most of the time it was a glancing blow, intended more in a “Don’t Be Such a Dumbass” sort of spirit than to inflict pain. In this instance, I think Sister JE mistimed her blow a bit, because pain was definitely inflicted - she really brought the wood. I chuckle today when I close my eyes and picture Sister JE approaching me from behind in slow-motion in that funky hat that obscures all their hair. I embellish the mind picture just a bit by imagining she left her feet before delivering the blow. In which case, in addition to a 15 Yard Penalty for Hitting a Defenseless Receiver, she could also get a Five Minute Major for Charging.
So when you are considering this whole “Arm The Teachers” deal, I implore you to also consider my tale as a cautionary one. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to envision the type of mayhem that someone like Sister JE could have sewn with the butt-end of one of those Bushmaster AR 15 rifles that are all the rage nowadays. I am also sure she could have come up with something quite “creative” related to 30-round magazines.
Remember folks: Guns don’t kill people, but some of those nuns are just bat-shit crazy.
