Bastille Day: October 2017

This essay is included in my Brooklyn Art Library, Sketchbook. My cataloged book is titled, "Passages."

Who Made Me

Sometime during the first grade, I became slow. Peggy sat across from me. I was in the first row of boys (top students), and she sat in the second row which was top girls. The fifth row? Who knew them? They were the dummies! As a punishment, I found myself unwelcome to the fifth and in permanent residence. I had started out with promise.

First grade, the first day in Sister Marie Paula’s classroom, I remember feeling abandoned by my mother. She took me to school that day and to my classroom. At the door my mother presented me to Sister who enveloped me in her voluminous robes, laughing and hugging me to a seat. When I looked back at the door my mother had disappeared! I was one of thirty chicks, chirping on the rocky coast of a hostile sea. I made it through that first day, but with a challenging homework assignment.

The Baltimore Catechism was handed to each of us. Our assignment was to memorize, the answers to:

“Who made us?”

God made us.

“Who is God?”

God is the Supreme Being, infinitely perfect, who made all things and keeps them in existence.

“Why did God make us?”

God made us to show forth His goodness and to share with us His everlasting happiness in heaven.

First graders generally didn’t read in those day. It was mighty difficult memorizing questions and answers when most of the words’ meanings were not part of our vocabulary. With patience my mother helped me memorize the questions and answers as she continued household work. She quizzed me, and I mastered the assignment.

Each student stood at the front of the classroom while Sister asked the three questions. I successfully regurgitated each answer not understanding a word of these powerful and theological concepts.

As I memorized the alphabet, and began to read, school became my routine. My brother and I walked, and the school guard stopped 38th Street traffic so that we could cross. I carried a plaid book satchel and a Robin Hood lunch box. We ate our lunch in the dining hall. It was the lower level of one school’s wings. Between second and third grade it was converted to six new classrooms to accommodate the growing student population.

We marched to Mass every morning. The first graders sat in the front pews with each grade assembled behind to the eighth graders in the back to the last pew. There were nearly 1000 attending St. Andrew Elementary.

A few weeks before Christmas, the first grade classrooms gathered in the dining hall to sing and practice carols for the Mothers’ Club. The club was much like a PTA. I remember myself with my mother, one evening just before our holiday break, walking up to the school, me excited about the performance for the Mothers’ Club.

Students were selected to play Mary, Joseph, shepherds, angels, and the wise men. I received the part of the drummer boy. This meant I stood front and almost center beating my drum as the cast and first grade chorus sang to the assembled mothers, nuns, priests, and teachers.

During the performance the first signs of dullness emerged. The root of my problem was shyness with a strong stubbornness which I inherited from my mother. Now add my powerful desire to retreat to my imagination and I earned the label “slow.”

A platform stage was setup at one end of the dining hall for the Mothers’ Club meeting and our Christmas pageant. The room was packed. As we sang our Christmas carols I dropped my drum. It rolled to the edge of the stage. I was petrified! What should I do? If I walked over and picked it up, everyone would notice me. I felt safe as long as I was part of the singing group. I stood there mortified, looking at my drum. I didn’t look at anything other than that drum resting on the edge of the stage. I can only assume that Sister Marie Paula was vigorously motioning for me to go and retrieve it, and continue my, “Pa rum pum pum pum

Rum pum pum pum.” I didn’t.

After the performance, we returned to our classrooms and enjoyed graham crackers and pints of milk. That was a standard treat at St. Andrew. On the way home, I don’t remember if my mother discussed the performance.

Christmas break began. The the magic of being a six year old at that time of year powered through two weeks.

When we returned to school, Sister Marie Paula told us to bring our favorite Christmas present. We each would get to show it and tell why it was our favorite. I selected a little wire contraption that Aunt Pat had given me and my siblings. It was a magnetic wire with a Santa that rolled up and down. I have something similar today that I found in a retro catalog.

We placed our toys under our desks waiting for the best part of the day when we would talk about our presents. Sister in the afternoon was called away from the classroom. As she left, of course she warned us to behave, no talking, be quiet. That lasted about as long as it took for the door to click shut.

I don’t remember who started the general classroom mayhem; it was probably Stanley who immediately got up from his desk and began talking. Soon the whole room was first graders, loudly talking, pushing or moving about. Of course I sat in my seat and tried to behave. Then, I looked over at Peggy in the desk seat next to mine. She was leaning over looking for something under her desk. She had one arm down and the other for balance reaching toward the ceiling. I could see down her little white blouse to her arm pit. I was transfixed. I took my #2 pencil and poked her arm pit. Why? There is no answer.

Just as she screamed and fell on the floor, Sister Marie Paula returned to the room in chaos with Peggy rising up in tears and anger at me. Of course, I became the immediate ring leader of this room of first graders in the throes of debauchery destined for the fires of hell.

Not only was my punishment exile to the fifth row, I moved my desk to the last position in the fifth row taking residence with the “dummies.” The Christmas gift show and tell never happened. My little Santa magnetic thingy sat under my desk in its brown paper bag.

My new location in the classroom provided me anonymity nurturing my shyness. I sat next to the windows. This solidified the adjective, “slow” as I began to enjoy gazing out at the traffic on 38th Street, and the world beyond. If I were called upon, I didn’t know what was being discussed nor the place in the book we were reading. I spent many anxious minutes standing next to my desk in shame as Sister admonished me for not paying attention. The more she admonished, the stronger my resistance grew “to show her” that I don’t care. (Thank you mother for the stubbornness.)

Sister Marie Paula was a dedicated teacher, she tried to nurture each of us, but there were too many. Shortly after that year she was transferred to the next Parrish and eventually became the principal of its elementary school.

“Who made me?”

God made me, but He should have giving Sister Marie Paula a user’s guide.

Bastille Day

Saturday, October 21, 2017

POEM - TWO COOL

Saturday, October 14, 2017

Friday, October 13, 2017

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

POEM - NOT KEWL

POEM - At The Fram

POEM - Michaelmas