Righteousness In The Classroom

A little bit more from my days at a Catholic High School.

Read all about it in my book: “I Thought I’d Died and Gone to Heaven” Click on the link at the top of the page for more details:

Father Stack was our Religion teacher. He was a tall man,
broad shouldered, strong and tough with big calloused hands and
a roughhewn face with roughhewn features. He always seemed
to need a shave. He had dark black wavy hair, cropped very short
on the sides, which appeared to be as thick as a steel wool pad.
He had that Irish Catholic bipolar temperament of being pious on
the one hand while being a religious rogue on the other. You
knew full well that he wasn’t one to mess with. His class was the
last class of the day.

Father Stack’s classroom was as sparse as the subject itself
except for his desk, his chair, our desks, and our benches.
Nothing on the walls except for the time clock, which was situated
high up on the wall above the door. This round, black rimmed
device with its white interface, interlaced with black
numbers and black hour, minute, and second hands was standard
issue and could be found in all of the classrooms, in the hallways,
the cafeteria, gymnasium, everywhere. I am sure the same
standard time piece could also be found at St Mary’s. It was
Catholic standard time and issue and, much like the STRAP,
these clocks were probably produced in the diocese somewhere.
And its impact on us was entirely psychological. Psychological
torture for that clock was strategically placed in such a way that
you could never take your eyes off of it. There it was, front and
centre, all of the time, in your face with its hands ticking away
ever so slowly in its pragmatic, precise manner: tick, tock, tick,
tock, tick.

Will this class ever end? Father Stack sensed this, but he
didn’t have to look at the clock for it was behind him. I often
wondered what he was thinking as he looked at all of us from his
perspective. We were watching him, listening to him, and trying
without success not to shift our glance up to the clock then back
to him again, hypnotically, trance-like, and straying so far away
from his center of attention as to render the opinion that this class
was really, really boring and it was really, really difficult to stay
awake. This was indeed torture.

There was also a large, heavy wooden bookcase situated at
one end of the classroom. This bookcase was unique in that all of
its shelves were chock full of books, magazines, papers, and the
like except for one shelf, the middle of five, which was as barren
and as empty as the warmth and cuddliness of Sister Mary
Bernice’s charm. It wasn’t long before we were apprised of the
true nature of this bare-faced entity. Funny, but not so funny, was
that the clock was also inextricably linked to the bookcase.
That effin’ clock. Invariably, that clock and the monotonous
tone of Father Stack’s lectures would cause many of us to fall
asleep or nod off. That was Father Stack’s cue for action as we
soon found out.

“(Insert last name here),” he would yell. “Front and center,”
he barked again like the Holy Roller that he was. Why he picked
that individual is lost on me for there were many of us nodding
off at the same time. Our eyes becoming as heavy as lead. The
head rocking forward then back, then forward, forward, down,
down then back up again in a jerky fashion. The eyelids so
heavy, like being hypnotized, followed by that whiplash motion
of awake-fullness, followed by a deep breath of consciousness,
only to begin the torturous routine and rhythm again. Man,
oh man!

Startled, the young boy, whoever he was, not me, would limp
up to the front of the class, somewhat forlorn, standing there like
a wet noodle, downtrodden and pathetic in front of Father Stack’s
desk. His whole body seemed to shake in nervous trepidation.
Father Stack would then slowly rise up from his chair, then take
the young lad aside but away from the desk and out of reach
from the front row of students. He would then tell him, no, order
him, not to move an inch.

Walking over to the wooden bookcase, Father Stack latched
onto the empty middle shelf and with his two hands pulled the
shelf up and out and away from the bookcase itself in one fell
swooping motion. Returning to the scene of the crime with said
shelf in tow, he would then order the lad to bend over but to look
straight ahead, not down.

The shelf itself measured about one foot in width, two and a
half feet in length, and approximately one inch in thickness. And
like everything else in the nun’s or priest’s arsenal, it was proportionately
attuned to the task at hand for they had years and years
of experience and lessons learned over centuries of practice.
After all, the Catholic faith, unlike other religious orders, had the
Inquisition to fall back on. And unlike a straight-edged stick or a
shortened wooden pole, the length and breadth and thickness of
Father Stack’s shelf required a bit more dexterity and skill from
the handler when meting out punishment of this order of
magnitude.

Father Stack stood athwartship, his legs apart, beside the lad,
well balanced and straight, grabbing on to both sides of the shelf
itself. Like a golfer lining up a shot, he took a couple of short
arched practice swings, being ever so careful as to not actually
strike the target. Stopping just shy of the target itself, millimeters
I would guess, took a great deal of discipline on his part. You
could tell that he was a real pro at this sort of thing. Satisfied that
he had the right angle of attack, Father Stack raised that wooden
shelf about shoulder high then came down hard in a cossacked
whirl-winded arc, robes flaring wildly, meeting his target ass on
and at a perfect right-angled trajectory to the backside of the poor
student. Whack! Well it was more like a thud really, of wood to
the cloth-covered ass. Even the tails of the student’s blue blazer
softened and mitigated the full force and pain of the strike to
some degree. The student lunged forward with his head and his
eyes focused straight ahead rather than down at the floor, as
Father Stack instructed. There was no danger that the student
would crash headlong into something or someone unseen given
the momentum unleashed by the shelf upon his pathetic frame.
Yes, Father Stack was a real pro. His follow through was Bobby
Jones–like in its execution. He had thought of everything. We
were witnessing a real lesson here in practical physics. Unfortunately,
this class was religion.

“Sit down.” Father Stack placed the shelf back in its cradle,
clapped his hands a few times, and then carried on with the class,
as if nothing had happened.

“One whack? Is that all?” we all thought, questionably. It was
enough, for it took some time for the lad to fuss up and return to
his desk. He gait was somewhat laboured, bowlegged, and when
he reached his seat he sat down slowly, methodically, and
gingerly. Red-faced, embarrassed, but somehow just a bit cocky
as his punishment was the first of many more to come. I think he
realized that and felt some pride in being the first student to
receive this lashing and to share this corporal experience with the
rest of us after class.

Thought for the day:

Given the “so called” toxic and racist nature of being white, why do Americans  call the White House the White House? Just askin that’s all.

Happy Tuesday

Oops, sorry, It’s Wednesday.

SJ…Out

Whack, Whack And More Whack

More from my halcyon days at a Catholic High School for boys: I Thought I’d Died and Gone to Heaven.”

SEPTEMBER 1964. High School. We had arrived.
St Basil’s High School no longer exists in its current location.
I don’t know why. I haven’t been there for many, many years.
Run by the priests, it was a Catholic private high school for boys
of some note and right adjacent to it, only separated by an elongated
playing field, a football field, was St Mary’s Catholic
private high school for girls. In essence the two schools represented
a real separation of church and dates.

Tuition by today’s standards was laughable, about $150 per
year. But back in the late ’50s and early ’60s that was a lot of
money to come up with year over year. Especially if you were
part of a fine upstanding Catholic family with a large brood of
boys and girls to contend with to populate these schools, as no
legitimate Catholic family would ever think of sending their
offspring to a public—code for Protestant—high school. On top
of that there were the school uniforms, the books and other
miscellaneous religious stuff to pay for. In my own family’s case,
my mom and dad had to come up with about $175 per year per
child—times three at some point in time, totaling $450 per year.
And with Dad making less than about $70 per week before taxes,
well, do the math! I know I couldn’t. It was as painful as it was
sinful.

I didn’t really know or care. I do remember travelling on the
bus with my mom, or in the car with both parents and as we
passed St Basil her telling me, proud as punch, that one fine day I
would be going there. One fine day indeed. I could not wait. That
was how the indoctrination went. To make ends meet we all had
to work part time during the school year and full time all summer
long to come up with the necessary bucks to offset our parent’s
financial woes due to those bloodsucking school tuitions. In all
honesty, however, I didn’t mind. Funny thing that, guilt. It
instilled in me a weird sense of justification for the privilege of
being physically and emotionally abused at a Catholic private
high school for boys.

Father Stallony, baloney; Father Sullen, the melon; Father
Stack, the wrack; Father Rourque, the dork, and on and on it
went: a faculty of priests sprinkled with a few priests in waiting,
and a smattering of lay associates, or civilian teachers, as well.
One lay associate in particular, a Mr Lord, our geography
teacher, had the weirdest of legs. He suffered from a bad case of
bowlegged-ness but in reverse. Turns out that a wicked football
accident literally crippled him with two bad breaks in both of his
legs. Permanently shackled with pins and metal joints and fasteners,
he was a sorry sight to look at, especially from behind, as it
appeared he was always holding back a large dump as he walked
down those hallowed halls of higher learning at St Basil’s
Catholic private high school for boys. We could be cruel.
Initially scared and intimidated by this new environment, it
was not long before I felt comfortable in my own skin and fit
right in. Remembering Mr O’Brian’s words of wisdom and
advice, we did have a lot of laughs. So much so that I went from
A grades to B grades in the course of a year and was falling still
as the months went by during my second year at that school.
Smoking while laying down the one side of the football field
with our backs to our own school pretending to be looking at the
female students of St Mary’s while in reality we were trying to
mask our drags and the exhaled smoke from the prying binocularized
eyes of the priests and brothers equated to a couple of
whacks from Father Dork, er Rourque.

My parents were a tad worried given their financial investment.
I did look rather Catholique in my uniform and tie, and
dirty black oxfords. That was all that really mattered to the
priests and our family. Pay the rent and play the party line.
Looking back on those days and knowing what I know now,
yes, there was a great deal of discipline but it was the wrong kind
of discipline. Instilling a sense of fear through physical abuse as
punishment was not real discipline as far as I was concerned.
Except perhaps in the creative sense of belonging to a brotherhood,
a cause, as me and my mates adapted extremely well, stuck
together, and did everything possible to forestall and undermine
the priests and the brothers of their dastardly ways.

Cool, white satin sheets.

SJ…Out

Trans…I Am

I am, therefore, I am… a Trans…Am

Of course you are my bright little star:

I am free. I am free. I am free at last for….

I was a Trans…Am…living in a Prius body:

See the source image

But now I am free because I have come out of the garage and I am really….

A TRANS…AM

Or a Turbo Charger trapped in a Nissan Leaf. I am….Free at Last:

Or perhaps I am….heaven help me…a Trans Political… just like JP Sears here:

Of course you are…………………..my bright little star.

SJ…Out

A Lot of Laughs

First: Is this the “Mark of the Beast?”

France’s President Macron delivered a 27-minute speech to the nation on television. Macron announced a full-blown authoritarian measure that takes France off the tourist list. He has made vaccinations MANDATORY for caregivers, store clerks, waitresses, and all other workers “in contact with the public” with no exceptions for health or religion. On top of that, he has made it also MANDATORY to have his Gates-inspired health pass to enter all restaurants, cafes, theaters, and cinemas. In other words, without a vaccination, you are not even allowed to go to the store and buy anything.

As if this was not bad enough, Macron also announced a pension reform after the epidemic. This is the real reason for all of this. SOCIALISM is dying and what they are really afraid of is an uprising where like in ancient Rome, the mob storms the palaces and beheads the emperor. Their solution – TOTALITARIANISM and there will be a subtle move to eliminate democratic elections in 2022.

Wow.

Consider this. It is not only the Indigenous people you know.

I remember one evening, a school night, it was about midweek.
I was running late and it was as cold as ice outside. I had
been at my friend’s house and was now on my way home, taking
a shortcut through the park, alone with my thoughts and my
futile attempt to stay warm. There was a cruel frost in the air that
froze one’s breath into that visible plane of CO2 stillness:
opaque, inert, foggy, dull whiteness that seemed to just hang
there in mid-air, motionless, wafting for a second or two, then
disappearing wistfully until followed inexorably by the next
sustained exhaled breath.

I sauntered down to the area of the rink. The usual bandits
were not there. In fact no one was there except a lone figure
holding a fire hose emitting a jet-streamed rush of water over and
on to the ice surface. The natural light of the half moon and its
reflection off of the snow and ice surface made it somewhat
surreal watching this stream of water jet forth from the nozzle
like liquid crystalline, then arc its way up and over some invis-
ible barrier, then down and out it went splattering onto the
surface of the ice, flowing and emanating outward in what
appeared to be rippled waves of smooth liquid velvet sheets
across a frozen yet clear, rejuvenated expanse. Ironically, that
cold blast of water resembled a cauldron of steam, exploding like
an expansion crack when it made contact with the surface and
frigid coldness of the ice.

The caretaker just stood there, like an automaton, as if
watching and admiring the outcome of his work from afar. He
would move the hose from side to side, then up and down a few
times, as if coaxing, then directing, the stream to do its magical
work, somewhat like a maestro conducting a movement. He was
old, about forty I would guess, crusty, with the wrinkled face of
someone who made his living working outdoors. He had a low
forehead from what I could see just shy of his toque. His was a
square face with a set strong jaw and a bulbous crooked nose
masking a dark, brooding inset pair of eyes. From time to time
one could see a slight glint but that only came to light as part of
the draw on his rolled cigarette. The exhaled smoke, combined
with his frozen breath, gave the impression of a magician’s folly
with nature’s illusion of turning water magically into ice.
He saw me, looked down at me, smiled I think, or perhaps
smirked. The cigarette was burning red hot ashes from the corner
of his mouth as both hands were needed to control the pressure
of the water hose.

“What can I do for ya, young lad?” he offered in a lyrical
brogue.

Somewhat embarrassed and off guard I returned: “Just watching,
sir, that’s all. Tomorrow this will be an awesome piece
of ice.”

“Aye, with any luck, if the weather holds.”

Silence.

“So, this must be some neat job you have here, looking after
things at the park?”

“Yes, but this is only part of it. I have three other rinks to
look after besides this one.”

“Wow” was about all I could muster. Then, continuing on:

“When I grow up, I want to have a job like this. So cool.”

He chuckled. “No you don’t, and no it ain’t,” he said rather
emphatically. “I have to do this. You don’t. I have no other
choice. You do. So stay in school.”

“But school sucks. I hate it. The nuns, the priests, the rules,
and the strap.”

He chuckled somewhat.

“It’s not funny.”

“Oh, I know. I know it’s not funny. But thinking back, I got it
good too from those nuns and priests. Real good. But not here.
Over in Ireland, where I come’d from, where I grew’d up—those
priests and nuns were the devil’s own, the devil’s fire brigade.”

“Really,” I thought aloud, “just like here?”

“Sure, sure,” he said. “They’re everywhere. With fire and
brimstone they spoke, with the brimstone and fire they breathed.
And they sure set the standard for all of the physical pain and
grief that a Catholic young lad or lass could harbour, without
being dead, the world over.”

“What school do you go to?” he asked.

“Our Lady of Peace,” I answered.
He looked right down at me and into my eyes, into my very
soul it seemed.

“Is that so,” he said. “Well, I think they had a school for it
over there as well. Our Lady’s School of Perpetual Abuse, I
would think. For they knew how to give it and we got it good,
day and night. Black and blue we was, then black again. The
thing is though we fought back, but in such a way that the bastards never knew they was being conned. We had a lot of
laughs outsmarting them, doing that. That was the key for us to
survive in these schools.”

He chuckled but in remonstrance, remembering perhaps that
it would seem to be a memory hidden or repressed.

“Listen to me, young lad. Adapt, and don’t let them get you
down, or get to you emotionally, in your thoughts, and if you do
it right you will have fond memories of your and your mates’
experiences and a lot of laughs. But I’m sure it isn’t as bad as
when I went to school. That was day and night back then. No rest
for the wicked boys and girls, as they said. We was all orphans.”

He paused, as if to let that last comment sink in. Then he
turned, slightly, to blanket another part of the rink with water.
Silent! I followed him around.

“Orphans? In Ireland? Wow.” It seemed so far away, and too
much to sink in.

“Orphans, yes. I don’t remember my mother or my father.
Just the school, the orphanage, the nuns and priests. But I got out
of it. Ran away and joined the Navy.”

And as if sensing my next question. “I was fourteen.”

“Yup, Royal Navy, the Senior Service, as they say.” He
volunteered, “It was also harsh discipline thar, in the Navy, but I
thrived on it cause I was already used to the abuse… Aaaargh.”
He laughed out loud.

“But in the Navy they had free rein to kill ya if they so
choosed. For being out of line, AWOL, or desertion as they
called it. But again, my mates kept me sane and my wingers safe.
And justice? For the smallest infraction, there was shipboard
justice… before the mast, before the Captain… the Coxswain
would cry out in his loud and booming voice: ‘MARCH THE
GUILTY BASTARD IN!’ As I said, I loved it. Rum was dirt
cheap and the cigs even dirtier cheapier. Clean sheets and three
squared—if you liked kippers and hard tack that is. But
compared to the boarding school, and the Army, I thought I had
died and gone to heaven.”

He paused, while directing the water to another section of the
rink. The was a moment of dead silence except for the crackling
sound that the water made when in contact with the frozen
expanse of the ice. He then continued with his story.

“I came through the war unscathed though. Only once did
providence come to my side.”

“What’s providence?” I interrupted

“Providence is a sort of destiny’s luck,” he continued. “Like
something that happens to you in the present that makes no sense
at all except that it has an enormous impact on something in the
future.”

He looked at me whimsically, quizzically, probably knowing
full well that I didn’t have a clue of what he was getting at.

“Let me explain it this way. I was transferred to an oiler—
that’s a ship that refuels other ships at sea, like a floating,
moving gas station on water—and just before boarding that ship
to leave port and to go out to our war station at sea, I was called
back. Some sort of emergency at home. How could that be, I
thought? I had no home! So the ship sailed without me and
when I arrived back in the town where I had lived at the
boarding school, it turned out that I did indeed have a younger
sister who was quite sick, had been given last rights, and had
asked for me. Turns out she, like me, had also been given up and
had been sent to another boarding school, but in the next village.
Damnation, I thought. I had a sister. As it turned out, her school
was a front for the so-called Magdalene Laundry Houses—or
asylum. You wouldn’t know about those places, but there was
nothing asylum about them I can tell you that. They was an
affront for sure, those sweathouses. An affront to humanity,
human kindness, compassion, empathy, everything civil and
just. The Irish nun’s laundry school from hell. And that’s all I’ll
say about that.”

He paused briefly, then continued.

“But, as unluckily as it was for her that this was, it was also
luckily for me because that oiler took a hit and being so full of
oil went up like a some heavenly torch, burnt the sky crimson, in
spectacular fashion it was with shades of reds and oranges and
yellows, before being doused to eternity’s sleep as she slipped,
stern first, into the sea, breaking up below the waves to the
bottom below but with one last glorious belch of sea salt from
old Neptune himself, or so they told me after. No one survived.”
He let that sink in for the moment.

Then continued, “I survived the war though death really hit home. I cried and I cried and I cried. I don’t know why I cried so hard because I didn’t
really know anyone on that ship, thank God for that. And I didn’t
know my own sister either yet I cried so hard for her.” He made
the sign of the cross with a free hand.

“What happened to your sister?” I asked, politely.

“Died… a lung disease. But she really died from one of life’s
broken hearts, and broken promises. I never knew her but I think
I loved her. Funny that. Not knowing somebody but still loving
them, potentially I guess, unconditionally perhaps, for I never
knew, I never knew her. The ties that bind, I think. You understand
me, boy?”

“I think so,” I said. I didn’t.

“Good, ’cause I’m not sure if I do… understand myself or
my life, that is.”

Silence again. Much longer this time as the time was needed
to take in this account of his.

“You should be getting home,” he said as he turned again to
strike out at another area of the rink.

“Stay in school, and don’t let them penguins get to you. By
the by, what’s your name?”

“John,” I answered, awkwardly.

“Well, John. I am Desmond O’Brian. Des for short, but not
for long.” He guffawed. “You can call me sir.” He guffawed and
guffawed again. Then he was suddenly snorting, snorting then
coughing, coughing hard, a bronchial, nicotine-laced cough that
went deep into his own form, shook his entire physical being
relentlessly before dying down and out through his throat.

“Glad to make your acquaintance, John.” He choked again
and waved me off with one arm, coughing again.

I left, turned away toward my street, and off I went, carefully
as the ground was extremely icy.

It always seemed weird, but nice, to me when an adult with
whom I had no association at all called me by my first and given
Christian name. John… John, yeah John. A simple name, yet the
sound of it from someone else’s voice directed at me and at me
alone gave me a sense of well-being and a confidence in myself
because the adult had the respect and acknowledgement of my
own existence in this world, however small my own worldly
horizon or vision might be. It was as if we shared some of life’s
experiences, good or bad, in some sort of way, synchronicity
perhaps. It was always a nice, heartfelt gesture to hear one’s own
name in that manner by a relative stranger. Instead of the usual
… MORRISON, PAY ATTENTION OR I’LL PAY IT
FOR YOU!

Before I was out of sight I stopped, turned, and looked back
at the rink. I could see Mr O’Brian ever so faintly, or should I say
his silhouette, which really resembled a dark, lifeless shadow in
the stillness of this winter’s night. The stream of water continuing
to rise, then arc, then cascade out and down and out again in
a frost-like icy fog over the surface of the rink. Tomorrow that
ice surface would be an awesome shade of greyish blue, a
smooth virginal sheen of ice, as fragile as frozen glass, bordered
by the brilliance of clean white snow, until the inevitable cut and
crunch of the first set of cold steel blades hit its surface.
I never saw Mr O’Brian again.

Have a great weekend…

SJ…Out

And We Got It Too…

Another excerpt from my experiences at a Catholic elementary school. Read all about it in my book: “I Thought I’d Died and Gone to Heaven.” Click on the link at the top of the page.

The Artful Dodger:

I REMEMBER ONE TIME, I believe it was in grade six, Mr
Bowner’s class, in one of the outside portables. We had a break
from our usual lessons when in walked Sister Mary Bernice to
instruct us on the vagaries and intricacies of confirmation—
another religious rite of passage, a sacrament. Not like corporal
punishment, mind you, but a call to religious arms in that you
were now a member of the Catholic brotherhood—and sisterhood.

But not to be outdone by the nuns, we still got whacked by
the priest on the top of the head. Hey, but the neatest part of this
sacrament was that we were allowed to take on an additional
name. Of course it was supposed to be a name that harkened
back to the saints or the martyrs or some other holy ordered
person. Not for me though. I was fascinated at the time by the
War of Independence and loved ornery sea stories. So I took the
name of Paul. St Paul, how cute, they thought. No, not really.
Paul, after John Paul Jones. My real first name was John so it fit
nicely. John Paul Morrison: the United States Navy’s first real
naval hero. Or so I dreamt.

As I am sitting there listening to the Sister’s rant about the
religious ceremony of confirmation, I became bored. And what
can a ten-year-old do in a situation like this? Squirm? Not really
and not for long. For those wooden seats expelled splinters.
Shake one’s leg? Perhaps. But one gets bored of that pretty
quickly. But Hilroy, God bless their hearts, they thought of everything
when they designed those plastic rulers for students like me
that could bend and yaw them with great flexibility before snapping
and breaking in two. They made great sling shots, but
without the sling. More like a catapult. Just bend her back, let her
go and watch the spit ball rip. Amazing! Better than that though,
these rulers had three holes that were strategically punctured
across the twelve inches of hard plastic sheen. One hole at each
end, about one inch back from the edge, and one hole of which
was dead centre on that ruler. And these holes were engineered to
such an extent that their circumference was just large enough that
an HB pencil, a number 2, could slide itself through those holes
with little friction. Man, those Hilroy engineers and designers
were geniuses. They thought of everything. All one had to do
was insert the HB pencil through the centre hole, flick one end of
the ruler with your finger, then watch it spin like a top or a helicopter
rotor around and centred on the pencil itself. Faster and
faster one could make that ruler spin, limited only by the quickness
of one’s finger and wrist. That is until that dreaded sound:
whack, whack, and more whack of open-palm hand to face
followed by the burning cheeks and the incessant ringing in the
ears. Sister Mary Bernice had struck again, ever so discreetly and
unapologetically.

Her other weapon came in the form of a very long, wellworn,
or should I say, well-used strap. It was about eighteen
inches long by about three inches wide by about one eighth inch
thick. It was rigidly firm yet flexible. It was worn and frayed at
the business end, brownish red and fading. Not blood-worn,
mind you, but faded from years of use. I often wondered where
on earth they got these things. A throwback to the Spanish Inquisition
perhaps? Or do they have a strap-making factory somewhere
in the Catholic Archdiocese. Perhaps all Catholic school
principals like Sister Mary Bernice had to take a course aptly
named “THE STRAP,” or “Corporal Punishment 101.” And did
they take them with them from school to school? And,
oxymoronically, our school was named “Our Lady of Peace.”
But just a few blocks away, in the next parish, was the more
appropriately named school “Our Lady of Sorrows.”

For us lads, getting the strap was somewhat like a rite of
passage. I remember on one occasion though, quite funny, a
bunch of us were summoned to the principal’s office—Sister
Mary Bernice. It meant only one thing, that summons: corporal
punishment. Her office was located at the end of a narrow
corridor on the main floor, adjacent to the school’s entranceway.
Once you entered the corridor, there was no turning back. And
her office door was always slightly ajar as I recall, but just a
smidgen, such that each one of us in that line of doomed souls
could hear the whacks and the cries and the wailing and the
gnashing of teeth. For this, as in all events at a Catholic separate
elementary school, and in real Catholic terms, was truly a religious
refrain and existential experience, pedagogically speaking
of course. You could also hear and feel the whoosh and the wind,
as that strap came down from heaven onto our earthly psalms,
er palms.

We were all lined up in single file. I was two back. Whoosh,
whack, whoosh, whack, whoosh, whack. I could hear plainly
enough and feel the rhythm of the usually two, sometimes four—
one or two whacks per hand. This waiting in line was pure
torture. I had to hand it to the nuns. They had an iron grip on
both corporal and psychological warfare, I mean punishment.
You knew what was coming. But the wait was interminable. The
summons, that call to arms, was almost akin to waiting for the
gallows and for your call number, er name, to come up. Will it
hurt? How bad? Will it sting? How bad? Some of the boys, the
really young ones screamed, peed, shit themselves and then cried
their eyes out.

“GET BACK TO CLASS—NEXT,” she snapped in precise
military fashion, like the drill sergeant that she was.
And, looking back on those incidents, I have to admire the
tenacity and perseverance of Sister Mary Bernice and her ilk. She
never let up. She was in great shape. She could easily handle ten
of us at one go. Ten? We were always in trouble. I wondered how
much she could press!

Next up, penultimately for me, was this gangly looking kid
from grade five. His offence? Who knew! But it didn’t really
matter what you did or did not do in these Catholic separate
elementary schools. You were singled out for something sinister
in deed or, failing that, in thought. Those nuns had to be telepathic,
no doubt. For even if you were outwardly innocent you
must have had evil thoughts of some sort. They knew, of course,
for they were always telling us to get rid of that smirk on our
faces or they would remove it for us. It obviously reflected a
nuance of some evil, pure and subconscious, unadulterated dread
and evil thoughts.

His name was Arthur—Arty for short. O’Neill I think. One of
eight siblings in that family. A good Catholic family. I knew his
younger brother Gerard. Arty was very tall for his age, thin as a
rake. Cocky and incorrigible, very athletic. I really do believe
that incorrigibleness is also a prerequisite to attend Catholic
separate schools because I heard that descriptive word uttered
toward us by the nuns and lay teachers on a daily basis.

Arty was a tough nut to crack in this religious environment.
He showed no respect, only humorous disdain for what was
occurring to him and the rest of us.

“NEXT!” Sister Mary Bernice barked.

Arty looked back at me with that smirkiness and smugness of
his and with a whispered smile he said, confidently:

“Watch this.” In he went.

“Hold out your right hand, Mr O’Neill.”

I could just barely see through the crack in the door. Arty
held out his hand. It didn’t shake out of terror. Surprisingly, it
was as steady as a rock. Sister Mary Bernice drew up and with
all of her strength and with her temples bulging and with her
bloodshot eyes aflame—frothing at the mouth, the devil incarnate
it seemed—came down from that mountain and burning
bush in such a whoosh with her hell-bent-for-leather strap.
But just then, at that precise moment in time, young Arty
pulled back on his arm. The strap missed Arty’s hand. It was too
late. The momentum and trajectory of the strap lacked the sudden
recourse of Arty’s gnarly hand to curtail the downward thrust of
that blood-worn tool of medieval pain. That strap came down so
fast and so hard and in full force with both a whiplash and a
snap, crackling sound that seemed to crack into eternity as well
as the right thigh of Sister Mary Bernice. Her habit shook wildly,
uncontrollably, and could offer no resistance or restraint from the
Godforsaken blow of the blood-worn strap.

Young Arty could not contain himself. He laughed himself
silly. It was not a nervous laugh, mind you, but a gut-wrenching
guffaw. The rest of us, at least those of us that could see what had
transpired, were in bewildered shock: almost like some spiritual
shock and awe moment. Young Arty had the good sense, even as
a twelve-year-old, to get the hell out of there. Sister Mary
Bernice waned somewhat but she was strong, steadfast, and
remained on her feet, cussing it seemed, hyperventilating, or was
that just spiritual raptur-ed-ness I heard, for she was calling on
God and the Son of God many, many, many times. I didn’t know
it until that particular moment that Jesus had a middle name that
started with the letter “H.”

The rest of us were spared. Good ole Arty. Funny that, but we
didn’t see Arty for a few weeks after that. And why did they call this punishment corporal? Don’t really know. As young impressionable lads, we didn’t have a clue as to what the term corporal punishment meant. That would come later. Yet this was no military school, I can tell you. So in that
vein I always wondered what “Private” punishment would be
like? This was after all somewhat of a private, albeit Catholic,
separate school. Then again perhaps it was best not to press the
issue or go in that direction.

Okay, so why didn’t they call it Lance Corporal Punishment?
This would be a more appropriate term, for more often than not
the skin on your palms would be slightly lanced with cuts and
scars as the tip of the strap cut into raw and virgin flesh. Blood
splattered everywhere. That strap sure was designed well: with
maximum potentiality for pain built right in with nastiness
threaded through and through into the coarse but smoothly
grained and textured leather. Perhaps it really was blood-worn.
And, I was told, but I don’t know for sure, or by whom, that once
you graduated to a Catholic high school, the Jesuits or Oblates or
Basilians, who ran those schools, had a name for their form of
disciplinary action, which was really code for corporal punishment—
not corporal punishment, or Lance Corporal Punishment
but Major Punishment, major pain. I can’t really believe that.
Must be a Catholic urban myth. We shall see.

Are you sitting comfortably:

Great song, great group. How I miss the British invasion, in stark contrast to the corporate musical crap that is out there now.

SJ………Out