“Hearing nuns’ confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.”
Last night I opened my bedroom window so I could fall asleep to the sound of the rain. I heard the wind and I heard the raindrops tapping on the overhang near my window. It was a lovely way to drift off to dreamland.
The day has yet to make up its mind. Should I be sunny or cloudy?
Yesterday I put the storm door on the front. While I was retrieving it from the cellar, I happened upon a dead mouse. By the looks of it, the mouse had met its heavenly reward a while back. I’m figuring Maddie was the mighty hunter. Fern is the queen who sleeps on a couch pillow.
I used to moan and groan when my mother woke me up for school. Nothing is worse than being torn from a warm bed, forced to eat lumpy oatmeal and made to walk to school in all weather. A kid’s lot is a tough one.
Nobody does well sitting in the same place most of the day, especially if it’s a confining desk, but the nuns kept us in line, mostly from fear of both them and our parents. I don’t ever remember a kid acting up in class. Whispering was the extent of our misbehavior, and you had to do that just right or risk wrath. You ducked your head behind the person in front of you and used a mixture of whispers and hand signals to get your message across while at the same time keeping an eye on the nun in front. Short messages had the best chances of success.
If you got away with it, talking in class was a deed worthy of song, one to be remembered in the annals of time and to be reenacted over and over during recess.
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October 15, 2010 at 12:33 pm
I attended St Andrews Convent in Ashtead between the age of 5 and 8. On one break, Mark Mower and I went in to the girls bathrooms, shot under the partitions and locked the doors from the inside. It didnt take long before Mother Mary Fidelis and her chums were going classroom to classroom asking for the perpetrators to come forward….we didn’t 🙂
Subsequently we were caned for singing outside Father’s door (while waiting for the boys bathroon strangely enough) – “Father opened the door and floated down the corridor” was good enough for a few swishes….first to ever be caned said the Executioner in her penguin outfit…today I thought ?
Not easy being CofE down with the Catholics, but Mark and I still get a laugh over those times
October 15, 2010 at 7:47 pm
My Dear Hedley,
You were a devil! That’s pretty funny though.
No one ever got hit where I went to school. Corporal punishment was against the law though it wasn’t and still isn’t in some states. The stare of an angry nun was punishment enough.
October 15, 2010 at 1:37 pm
As i remember we used to have a lot of work in teams, so we were allowed to talk rather much in school. I guess the team work helped both the more gifted children when they helped the others and the less gifted when they got the help. We really got to know each other real well. Perhaps that was the reason there was very little bullying in my class?
But I also remember that in between different team works there was no talking at all, except from us that just couldn´t be quiet 🙂 🙂
Cold and sunny here today and it will continue like that all weekend 🙂
Have a great day now!
Christer.
October 15, 2010 at 7:49 pm
Christer,
We were seldom allowed to talk in school-lunch was about it though I think we could talk during art too.
Bullying wasn’t common in schools so much then. Our teachers were hawk eyes watching kids and no bad behavior was tolerated.
Cold, raw and damp here today.
October 15, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Those were the days, . . . watching the Nuns walking around with sticks ready to beat you with and oh the cries! Those pointers got my knuckles a few times. No going back there again.
October 15, 2010 at 7:45 pm
Wow, Z&Me,
I went to school for eleven years with nuns as teachers and never once saw a kid get hit. What kind of nuns did you have? Attila the Nuns?
The ones in this picture are the same ones I had in high school.
October 16, 2010 at 4:41 pm
My Mother pulled us both out of Catholic school because of other Moms complaining and the fact I was hit on twice and my Mother told Mother Superior to stop it. They did not. In fact, we would have gone to C school through High School but didn’t because at St Matthews there were strict rules and some parents thought too strict. Mine also. But we ended up doing OK and loved Public School which was where all our friends went.
October 16, 2010 at 4:52 pm
Z&Me,
Luckily that never happened to us. I was in Catholic school until I moved to the cape where there were none at the time. Public school wasn’t my favorite of the two as I had some so so teachers who made learning vapid.
The high school I went to wasn’t all that strict even though we had to wear uniforms. I loved that school and was active in all sorts of clubs. I missed it and my friends when I left.
Little did I know then that the cape would remain my home, and I would work at that high school.
October 17, 2010 at 1:35 am
Spare a thought for “our nun”, Mary Mckillop who is about to be canonised today.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_MacKillop) She was a very strong and doughty woman, who actually was excommunicated because of her setting up of the Josephite nuns.Australians give her high regard because she brought education to the poor in the countryside…..I was brought up by nuns in primary school and they were no nonsense, take no prisoners types, which gave us all a stoicism that has
never left….
October 17, 2010 at 8:16 pm
sblake,
NPR mentioned this today, but I didn’t know the particular’s of Mary McKillop’s life. It was amazing what she had to go through to get her order accepted let alone the difficulties at home.
Nuns had a look and way about them that didn’t allow any nonsense, though they were far more liberal in high school than grammar school.