Do nuns have hair? And other mysteries

I told my dog how I sobbed as the other students marched off in their costumes to parade through the halls, leaving me alone in the classroom to cry over those darned Pilgrim cuffs.

Then my dog scratched her ear, sniffed at a glob of dried mustard on the ground, and said, "That’s really interesting, Dave. More stories like that and you could write a book. A really, really boring book."

Maybe she’s right. Maybe readers let out a collective "here-he-goes-again" sigh when I begin to write about my past. For that reason, plus the fact that I never went to Catholic school, I’ve decided to do something a bit differently, and use this Catholic Schools Week column to print other people’s school-days memories, such as my mom, for example. By the way, all of the following are true.

During the dust-bowl days, when huge plumes of blowing dirt turned day into night, pupils at Mom’s school – and probably many others – were forced to use a rope to get from the school to the outhouse without getting lost. And today we complain about cold toilet seats.

(I have to add an aside here. On her farm, Mom had a rooster with issues that would try to attack her whenever she ventured to the outhouse. If she made it there without being attacked, she would hear the rooster pacing just outside the door, waiting for her to come out. I’m not sure, but I think this is how Stephen King got started.)

A friend of mine who shall remain nameless (she lost her name in a poker game), said that the nuns who ran her Catholic high school had an interesting extracurricular activity, that of making booze in their basement. On one fateful night, neighbors were awakened to a "KABOOOOOM!" when the nuns’ still exploded. Police were called, neighbors clad in robes stood gazing outside their homes, and a bunch of unhurt but very embarrassed nuns smelling of elderberry made the morning edition.

It was these same nuns, she said, who, back then, dressed in habits that hid every hint of flesh, save their hands and face. This fact led many a second and third grader to debate as to whether or not nuns had hair. One day, she said, a nun leaned over and a small wisp of hair fell from her habit, thus putting an end to the mystery.

Among the other debates that were later solved: nuns indeed had feet (rather than wheels, as reported by six-year-old Mary Jenkins), and Sister Theodesia was, in actuality, of the planet earth, and not a visitor from a world where people only have one eyebrow.

Gordon Hughes shared this story of his Catholic school days in Ireland: "In the days before permanent wall mounted chalkboards, a portable blackboard and easel was used for instruction. One day I was chosen for the job of setting it up. As I grabbed the board and turned to walk towards the front of the class, it began to slip from my hands and caught a fire extinguisher, which hung on the wall nearby, sending it crashing to the floor. The fall broke the valve of the extinguisher and it began to spray foam in all directions as it rolled around the floor. The teacher grabbed it and ran down the stairs to the outside of the building. In the process he sprayed a continuous line about waist high on the outer wall of the stairwell."

When asking about Catholic school stories from times-gone-by, there always seem to be one or two about extremely strict teachers who could take out a division of Nazi stormtroopers with a single ruler, much less a class of unruly 10-year-olds.

But there are also the heartfelt stories, such as when the nuns allowed a little girl to bring her two baby brothers to class each day while her great aunt, who, with the little girl’s mother, ran their home, was in recovery from an illness.

And there was another little girl, for whom her teacher asked one student each day to bring lunch during the depression, until one day the girl died of "something called malnutrition."

And while my Mom wasn’t fond of getting in trouble and having to "sit next to Sister during Mass," she said, "I loved almost all of it, and now I see the benefits of what the nuns taught, especially when it came to raising my own family."