Friction and Harmony

This came to me via email. I couldn’t resist sharing it as a prelude to my own story:

Little Mary Margaret was not the best student in Catholic School. Usually she slept through the class.

One day her teacher, a Nun, called on her while she was sleeping.

“Tell me Mary Margaret, who created the universe?”

When Mary Margaret didn’t stir, little Johnny who was her friend sitting behind her, took his pencil and jabbed her in the rear.

“God Almighty!” shouted Mary Margaret. The Nun said, “Very good” and continued teaching her class.

A little later the Nun asked Mary Margaret, “Who is our Lord and Savior?” But Mary didn’t stir from her slumber.

Once again, Johnny came to her rescue and stuck Mary Margaret in the butt. “Jesus Christ!!!” shouted Mary Margaret and the Nun once again said, “Very good,” and Mary Margaret fell back asleep.

The Nun asked her a third question…”What did Eve say to Adam after she had her twenty-third child?”

Again, Johnny came to the rescue.

This time Mary Margaret jumped up and shouted, “If you stick that damn thing in me one more time, I’ll break it in half!”

The nun fainted…

Nuns can be so much fun.

I attended parochial school from Kindergarten through the end of high school, so I know nun-jokes! Some of ‘em are even true.

Last week, a quasi-religious discussion erupted over at Harvey’s place about the media’s inevitable gravitation to the sensational in addressing ‘radical atheism.’ That got me to thinking about the time where I was accused – by a sweet little nun – of being an atheist:

Sister Doloretta was my religion teacher that quarter in my Sophomore year of high school. She was also our class counselor. I had been doing poorly in her class, “Social Justice,” because it amounted to little more than a game of ‘Sister Says’. The course dealt with current societal issues, and grades were given on a purely subjective basis; if you agreed with Sister and regurgitated her opinions, you sailed through the course. If you thought otherwise, or for that matter, actually thought… it was academic doom.

For instance, at that particular time, there was a controversial issue which led to the call for a boycott of a company that was “killing people.” The company had been producing a ‘high-protein nutritional supplement’ that was causing people to die from renal failure because instead of being distributed as intended – as a supplement to a diet lacking in protein (i.e., rice and dirt) – it was being consumed by the people as a staple. Said people – whom were already in various stages of malnourishment up to the literal brink of death by starvation – were horking-down gobs of almost pure-protein, and subsequently, as their bodies were unaccustomed and unprepared to process it – it became toxic and caused their deaths.

I argued that the company was acting in good faith by doing what it could do to provide a solution – that it was contributing something that, if used under the right circumstances and administered properly as the supplement it was intended to be, would in all likelihood be helping people to thrive where they otherwise could not. Further, I contended that the improper distribution and use was not the company’s fault, since they had little control over its specifically-prescribed use once the product had left their warehouses. And as such, I felt the boycott was not only unwarranted, but perhaps even immoral itself, since it was a call to punish a company for trying to do something good.

I was given an “F” and called to her office.

We argued back and forth the issues that had been presented in her class. The “F” really pissed me off, and I was indignant. I was making my case – I had been doing my homework, participating in class, but since I didn’t agree with what were purely subjective questions on her test, I failed. I don’t remember exactly how we got to the point, but eventually Sister asked me out of the blue, “Bitterroot, why don’t you believe in God?”

*Blink*

I thought to myself, ‘where the hell did THAT come from?’ Never once did I deny believing in God, nor say or do anything that I thought would indicate such a thing. I was speechless.

“Bitterroot, I want you to imagine this. See that typewriter on my desk?” She pointed to a Volkswagen-sized, blue IBM Selectric ball-element typewriter.

“Uh-hunh.”

“Bitterroot, imagine if you spread a blanket out on the ground, and then took that typewriter apart. Imagine that you placed every last tiny screw and gizmo on that blanket, and then imagine if you threw those parts up into the air repeatedly, catching them all on the blanket again. Imagine that you did this for all eternity. Bitterroot, how many times in the rest of all eternity do you think that typewriter would come-together in one working piece again?” Already, I was thinking, ‘that’s a whole lot of imagining… and eternity just about describes this meeting!’

“Uh… None?” I could see where this was going, but I didn’t yet have a retort until she opened the door wide for me…

“THAT’S RIGHT! None! So you see, Bitterroot, there has to be a supreme and loving God to have allowed that typewriter to even have been created in the first place!” She pointed a little, bony finger triumphantly into the air.

I looked at the typewriter. I looked at Sister. I looked again at the typewriter, and at the little one-inch-square plate on the center-face with just three letters on it. I looked back at sister.

“IBM?” I said, with the mocking, know-it-all, smart-ass tone that every fifteen-year-old knows so well how to wield. I was pretty pleased with my answer – I sat back with a smug little smart-ass smirk on my face. I was mentally high-fiving myself…

Sister gritted her teeth and started to turn red, then crimson, then almost purple. She was shaking. My self-satisfaction turned to an almost genuine concern for a few nanoseconds when I realized she might be suffering an apoplexy. I began to lean toward her when suddenly, this always soft-spoken, saccharine-sweet, tiny woman erupted…

“OUT!” she shrieked. “GET OUT!! GET OUT OF MY OFFICE NOW!!“

I almost fell over myself as I tumbled out of the chair, snatching my book bag from the floor in the very nick of time… I was tilted forward, and my effort to get my feet under me to right myself rocketed me out of the counseling office door. Heads popped out of doorways as I crashed into the lockers on the hallway opposite the door from which I had just launched. I looked back to see if a little possessed nun was giving chase, but caught just a glimpse of her bony little hand as she slammed her office door shut. Mrs. Gunn, our school secretary, just looked at me and said matter-of-factly from her office behind the glass window adjacent to the counseling offices, “I’ll let Dean Karr know to be expecting you when he gets back in. Go to class for now – but be listening for the page.”

Fortunately, nothing came of the incident. Dean Karr laughed – but made me promise not to tell anyone that he found her to be almost as annoying as the students did. She once had filled his office with angry parents when she drilled students on a laundry-list of sexually-related mortal sins – and then called to conference the parents of any student who refused to answer, or who answered with anything that she found less-than-satisfactory. One girl I knew from my homeroom reportedly responded to the question, ‘are you still a virgin?’ with her own question, “why, Sister, are you jealous?” I understand she got the same apoplectic launch from the counseling office door… Which would of course explain Mrs. Gunn’s steadfast reaction. I’m surprised they didn’t pad those locker doors.

Of course I did finally find myself in trouble as a result of that conversation – but it wasn’t until near the end of my senior year when I foolishly thought everyone had forgotten the incident in Sister Doloretta’s office. The school had a chapel where Mass was offered daily in the early mornings. So late one afternoon, I crept into the chapel and replaced one of the statues with…

A Volkswagen-sized, blue IBM Selectric ball-element typewriter.

I do hope that when I leave this world I find St. Joseph has a sense of humor.

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Oh, God! I’m suffering Blogger’s Remorse big-time… I’ve been ‘outed’ on Mrs_Who’s (my wife’s) blog, House of Zathras… That makes her my blog-mother.

So what did I do to cope? I opened a beer, took a sip and handed the rest to Mrs_Who. As most mothers know, beer can be a new mother’s best friend. She will be nursing later…