HOW TO RUN FROM A NUN
Friends! I’m back after two days in Pennsylvania, during which I got to meet a few of you. That was fantastic.
Originally, I was going to write up a huge update today on all kinds of things, including giveaways, books, and Bartlesville. But I’ve been promising you another story for a while, and it’s kind of relevant. So those things will (really) come tomorrow.
Today, I want to talk about speaking. And running.
Tonight I’ll be at the Tompkins Square branch of the New York Public Library, reading with Claudia Gabel, Nico Medina, Sarah Mlynowski, Blake Nelson, Jenny Pollack, and Sara Shepard. On Saturday, I’ll be at Books of Wonder. Then on Monday, I fly to Georgia where I will be staying with Dr. Betty Vox, and signing in the Atlanta area.
Do you guys remember Betty Vox? My partner in the running of the prom? Featured in the story, “Why Betty Vox and I had to run from a nun with a three-pronged cane and why it is all my fault”?
I keep promising to tell you that story. The time has come!
As I’ve mentioned time and time again, I went to a Catholic girls school, where I was strapped into a polyester uniform and locked inside for four years. I wasn’t Catholic, which was an additional complication on top of the normal complication that is high school. So, on top of the assumed joys, I had the pleasure of knowing I was the Wrong Religion and that I was kind of doomed.
Also, I didn’t know the words or the rules. People who go to Catholic school all their lives carry around a wealth of information that they aren’t even aware of. They know tons of prayers, and all the words to mass, and all the little gestures and rules and steps that non-Catholics don’t have a clue about. In the beginning, it was kind of like being thrust into a play without a script.
Our school had thoughtfully implemented millions of ways for us to get in trouble. Some of these things they wrote down in a completely incomprehensible rulebook, which quite honestly contained instructions like:
It went on and on like this, describing the sides of the halls we were allowed to walk on, when exactly we were allowed to go to our lockers, and the truly mystifying A-B-C-D-E-F schedule system, which changed all the times of the periods and sometimes required the changing of clothes. (We had to wear blazers to chapel, even if it was 110 degrees, but could wear our sweaters on certain variations.)
Imagine having to learn all of that, on top of learning the entire religion of Catholicism in both its liturgical and social aspects. And the school didn’t have a great deal of sympathy in this matter. When we arrived as confused and deeply startled freshmen, we were informed that we had THREE DAYS to master it all.
And we were locked inside a convent with no boys, in heat-trapping polyester.
While I am a generally sanguine person, this situation did wear at my nerves at times. I tried my best to master all the rules, along with observing Catholic behavior frantically. I never caused any real trouble.
One day, I was in the third floor bathroom with Betty, who was one of the two other non-Catholics. We were sitting around and talking. It was just after three o’clock. Classes had been over for a little while, so we weren’t doing anything wrong.
And then in came a nun I will call Sister Ann Oiance.
Pretty much every sister of the order had a job, or a series of jobs, and they worked quite hard. But Sister Ann Oiance was one of about three mysterious nuns who were kind of “without portfolio.” No one really knew what she did. She did have some kind of sketchy title, like “head of the media center” or something like that, but we didn’t have a media center, and even if we did, she didn’t seem like the kind of person who would be pushing the TV down to your classroom. One reason for this: Sister Ann Oiance walked with a three-pronged cane.
Sister Ann Oiance had taken it upon herself to do a different job entirely, and that job seemed to consist entirely of walking the halls in a never-ending state of anger. She had one favorite trick, which involved our lockers. Because we had crazy rules about when we could go to our lockers (never), and because we had tons of heavy books, we sometimes tried to sneak around and dump some of them off quickly between classes. We did this by leaving our locks undone, but carefully positioned to look locked.
Sister Ann Oiance would walk the halls when we were in class and pull on our locks to find these unlocked ones. Then she would flip them and lock them. I don’t know if you’ve ever had to unlock a flipped lock in a crowded hallway when you were in a rush, but take it from me, it’s not fun.
Anyway, Betty and I are in the bathroom, brushing our hair or something, and in comes Sister Ann Oiance. She immediately launched into us, which shocked us both.
“Girls!” she barked. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
We didn’t know the answer to that one. We were just, you know, in the bathroom. After school. It’s not something that can be explained in depth.
“This is CONVENT PROPERTY after 3 in the afternoon!” she went on! “I’m writing you both up!”
Now, I had never heard of this rule, and neither had Betty. We tried to protest and explain this, but she just got angrier and told us off more and more while she fumbled for her demerit pad, saying how we were invading the convent and generally ruining the world.
It was just not true. She was making it up. Or maybe it had been true in 1950, but it was no longer true, and she was simply hassling two girls who were just minding their own business for no reason at all.
I don’t really know what happened in my brain as I listened to this, but something in me had clearly had Enough. Enough insane rules and regulations and being told how I was doomed. Enough confusion.
In the short silence that followed, someone called Sister a b***h.
Just like that. The word just leaked into the air. Not meanly or angrily. Just firmly and matter-of-factly.
B***h.
I was even more surprised to find this person was me. Apparently, my mouth had decided to act on its own. I was normally the meek one, the one who didn’t give anyone any trouble. I had apparently decided to break out of this in a big way.
This was really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really not okay.
You must realize that you could get written up at my school if your socks sloutched or if you were missing a button. So calling a nun a b***h was just slightly better than, oh, let’s say . . . setting the English Center on fire.
It was definitely grounds for expulsion.
Betty looked at me. There were no words for it. There was no expression for how bad this was, or how unexpected, or how utterly, utterly unrecoverable. Sister Ann Oiance was rendered speechless. I had overloaded her circuits temporarily. I was about to become one of those people who went down in school folklore as the Bathroom B***h Girl Who Was Never Heard From Again. Adrenaline started coursing through my body, making me feels strong and woozy at the same time. My brain started working very quickly, at that special speed that brains only work at when they think the body they ride around in is about to be killed.
In that moment, in a single look between Betty and I, we knew what had to be done. We all wore nametags. I would be identified as soon as sister recovered enough to look. Her eyes were already heading towards it.
We moved as one.
We started running. Really running. Not jogging. Not just going fast as a joke. This was an end-of-the-world, Godzilla is behind us, zombies are coming, Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible III kind of a run . . . which was something else you weren’t allowed to do in our school. The run alone could have gotten us in detention. But what was behind us was so much worse. Of course, what was behind us was a woman with a three-pronged cane, but I think I honestly believed at that moment that that cane would fire up like a rocket and sister would FLY DOWN THE STAIRS and consume us.
I had done the deed, but Betty was running because she knew that an explosion of that size takes down everyone in the vicinity. Running was the only viable solution—jumping out of the window might have been better, except that the inevitable immobility and hospitalization would have trapped us and identified us, and no, there would have been no pity.
We ran down three flight of stairs (the wrong way), shoved people out of the way in the lobby, ran down the front walk, down the stairs to the parking lot, through the parking lot, through the soccer field, and didn’t even slow down until we were in the alley that ran behind the school lot. And even then, we did not really stop. We jogged up the road, to the street, turned a corner, and lurked in some bushes at some random house.
“I don’t know why I just did that,” I said, as we collapsed to the ground. “I may never know.”
Betty knew. Betty and I have known each other since we were eight, and she knows that though I am often quiet, there is certainly something in me that will only take so much, and that I was capable of acting in very unexpected ways when I felt that something was Wrong.
The amazing thing about this is that it seems just as scary in retrospect as it did at the time. That could have been the end of my Catholic school career. I could have ended up booted. The only reason I can see that that didn’t happen was because, for once in my life, I listened to the wild yawlp of nature, and followed my deep biological instinct to RUN FROM THE SCARY THING.
I spent the next few weeks dodging and weaving away from Sister Ann Oiance. I was not above throwing myself to the ground, hiding behind doors, and ducking under tables.
“I understand,” I hear you say. “But how does this apply to me? What can I learn? I am sitting here studying for a final exam. I start my summer job in a week, and my boss is guaranteed to be insane and hate me. What can I take from your experience?”
I’ll tell you.
1. Those things that happen at school or you job that you think will ruin your life forever and you will never recover from? Not necessarily the case. And no, you are not an evil person. Both Betty and I have turned out just fine.
2. Always WATCH OUT FOR JELLYFISH. When it doubt, assume the object in question is a jellyfish. Sure, you may later find out it was a shell, or a wave, or a shoe, or your best friend’s foot poking out of the sand . . . but it MIGHT have been a jellyfish, and you should run from it. RUN! RUN NOW!
(There are other things to be scared of. If you require it, I will provide an entire list of MJ’s THINGS TO BE SCARED OF IN THE SUMMERTIME. My list is very thorough and will keep you alive longer. Let me know if I should put it up.)
Updates tomorrow. Now, I’m off to my reading. I promise not to call any of you any rude names if you show up, b****tes.
Originally, I was going to write up a huge update today on all kinds of things, including giveaways, books, and Bartlesville. But I’ve been promising you another story for a while, and it’s kind of relevant. So those things will (really) come tomorrow.
Today, I want to talk about speaking. And running.
Tonight I’ll be at the Tompkins Square branch of the New York Public Library, reading with Claudia Gabel, Nico Medina, Sarah Mlynowski, Blake Nelson, Jenny Pollack, and Sara Shepard. On Saturday, I’ll be at Books of Wonder. Then on Monday, I fly to Georgia where I will be staying with Dr. Betty Vox, and signing in the Atlanta area.
Do you guys remember Betty Vox? My partner in the running of the prom? Featured in the story, “Why Betty Vox and I had to run from a nun with a three-pronged cane and why it is all my fault”?
I keep promising to tell you that story. The time has come!
As I’ve mentioned time and time again, I went to a Catholic girls school, where I was strapped into a polyester uniform and locked inside for four years. I wasn’t Catholic, which was an additional complication on top of the normal complication that is high school. So, on top of the assumed joys, I had the pleasure of knowing I was the Wrong Religion and that I was kind of doomed.
Also, I didn’t know the words or the rules. People who go to Catholic school all their lives carry around a wealth of information that they aren’t even aware of. They know tons of prayers, and all the words to mass, and all the little gestures and rules and steps that non-Catholics don’t have a clue about. In the beginning, it was kind of like being thrust into a play without a script.
Our school had thoughtfully implemented millions of ways for us to get in trouble. Some of these things they wrote down in a completely incomprehensible rulebook, which quite honestly contained instructions like:
There will be complete silence on the chapel stairs at all times. The chapel stairs can be used to go UP ONLY from the start of the day until the second bell at 8:17. At this time, girls can go both up and down between the 2nd and 3rd floors ONLY. After 7th period, girls may go down from the third floor to the first floor.
It went on and on like this, describing the sides of the halls we were allowed to walk on, when exactly we were allowed to go to our lockers, and the truly mystifying A-B-C-D-E-F schedule system, which changed all the times of the periods and sometimes required the changing of clothes. (We had to wear blazers to chapel, even if it was 110 degrees, but could wear our sweaters on certain variations.)
Imagine having to learn all of that, on top of learning the entire religion of Catholicism in both its liturgical and social aspects. And the school didn’t have a great deal of sympathy in this matter. When we arrived as confused and deeply startled freshmen, we were informed that we had THREE DAYS to master it all.
And we were locked inside a convent with no boys, in heat-trapping polyester.
While I am a generally sanguine person, this situation did wear at my nerves at times. I tried my best to master all the rules, along with observing Catholic behavior frantically. I never caused any real trouble.
One day, I was in the third floor bathroom with Betty, who was one of the two other non-Catholics. We were sitting around and talking. It was just after three o’clock. Classes had been over for a little while, so we weren’t doing anything wrong.
And then in came a nun I will call Sister Ann Oiance.
Pretty much every sister of the order had a job, or a series of jobs, and they worked quite hard. But Sister Ann Oiance was one of about three mysterious nuns who were kind of “without portfolio.” No one really knew what she did. She did have some kind of sketchy title, like “head of the media center” or something like that, but we didn’t have a media center, and even if we did, she didn’t seem like the kind of person who would be pushing the TV down to your classroom. One reason for this: Sister Ann Oiance walked with a three-pronged cane.
Sister Ann Oiance had taken it upon herself to do a different job entirely, and that job seemed to consist entirely of walking the halls in a never-ending state of anger. She had one favorite trick, which involved our lockers. Because we had crazy rules about when we could go to our lockers (never), and because we had tons of heavy books, we sometimes tried to sneak around and dump some of them off quickly between classes. We did this by leaving our locks undone, but carefully positioned to look locked.
Sister Ann Oiance would walk the halls when we were in class and pull on our locks to find these unlocked ones. Then she would flip them and lock them. I don’t know if you’ve ever had to unlock a flipped lock in a crowded hallway when you were in a rush, but take it from me, it’s not fun.
Anyway, Betty and I are in the bathroom, brushing our hair or something, and in comes Sister Ann Oiance. She immediately launched into us, which shocked us both.
“Girls!” she barked. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
We didn’t know the answer to that one. We were just, you know, in the bathroom. After school. It’s not something that can be explained in depth.
“This is CONVENT PROPERTY after 3 in the afternoon!” she went on! “I’m writing you both up!”
Now, I had never heard of this rule, and neither had Betty. We tried to protest and explain this, but she just got angrier and told us off more and more while she fumbled for her demerit pad, saying how we were invading the convent and generally ruining the world.
It was just not true. She was making it up. Or maybe it had been true in 1950, but it was no longer true, and she was simply hassling two girls who were just minding their own business for no reason at all.
I don’t really know what happened in my brain as I listened to this, but something in me had clearly had Enough. Enough insane rules and regulations and being told how I was doomed. Enough confusion.
In the short silence that followed, someone called Sister a b***h.
Just like that. The word just leaked into the air. Not meanly or angrily. Just firmly and matter-of-factly.
B***h.
I was even more surprised to find this person was me. Apparently, my mouth had decided to act on its own. I was normally the meek one, the one who didn’t give anyone any trouble. I had apparently decided to break out of this in a big way.
This was really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really not okay.
You must realize that you could get written up at my school if your socks sloutched or if you were missing a button. So calling a nun a b***h was just slightly better than, oh, let’s say . . . setting the English Center on fire.
It was definitely grounds for expulsion.
Betty looked at me. There were no words for it. There was no expression for how bad this was, or how unexpected, or how utterly, utterly unrecoverable. Sister Ann Oiance was rendered speechless. I had overloaded her circuits temporarily. I was about to become one of those people who went down in school folklore as the Bathroom B***h Girl Who Was Never Heard From Again. Adrenaline started coursing through my body, making me feels strong and woozy at the same time. My brain started working very quickly, at that special speed that brains only work at when they think the body they ride around in is about to be killed.
In that moment, in a single look between Betty and I, we knew what had to be done. We all wore nametags. I would be identified as soon as sister recovered enough to look. Her eyes were already heading towards it.
We moved as one.
We started running. Really running. Not jogging. Not just going fast as a joke. This was an end-of-the-world, Godzilla is behind us, zombies are coming, Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible III kind of a run . . . which was something else you weren’t allowed to do in our school. The run alone could have gotten us in detention. But what was behind us was so much worse. Of course, what was behind us was a woman with a three-pronged cane, but I think I honestly believed at that moment that that cane would fire up like a rocket and sister would FLY DOWN THE STAIRS and consume us.
I had done the deed, but Betty was running because she knew that an explosion of that size takes down everyone in the vicinity. Running was the only viable solution—jumping out of the window might have been better, except that the inevitable immobility and hospitalization would have trapped us and identified us, and no, there would have been no pity.
We ran down three flight of stairs (the wrong way), shoved people out of the way in the lobby, ran down the front walk, down the stairs to the parking lot, through the parking lot, through the soccer field, and didn’t even slow down until we were in the alley that ran behind the school lot. And even then, we did not really stop. We jogged up the road, to the street, turned a corner, and lurked in some bushes at some random house.
“I don’t know why I just did that,” I said, as we collapsed to the ground. “I may never know.”
Betty knew. Betty and I have known each other since we were eight, and she knows that though I am often quiet, there is certainly something in me that will only take so much, and that I was capable of acting in very unexpected ways when I felt that something was Wrong.
The amazing thing about this is that it seems just as scary in retrospect as it did at the time. That could have been the end of my Catholic school career. I could have ended up booted. The only reason I can see that that didn’t happen was because, for once in my life, I listened to the wild yawlp of nature, and followed my deep biological instinct to RUN FROM THE SCARY THING.
I spent the next few weeks dodging and weaving away from Sister Ann Oiance. I was not above throwing myself to the ground, hiding behind doors, and ducking under tables.
“I understand,” I hear you say. “But how does this apply to me? What can I learn? I am sitting here studying for a final exam. I start my summer job in a week, and my boss is guaranteed to be insane and hate me. What can I take from your experience?”
I’ll tell you.
1. Those things that happen at school or you job that you think will ruin your life forever and you will never recover from? Not necessarily the case. And no, you are not an evil person. Both Betty and I have turned out just fine.
2. Always WATCH OUT FOR JELLYFISH. When it doubt, assume the object in question is a jellyfish. Sure, you may later find out it was a shell, or a wave, or a shoe, or your best friend’s foot poking out of the sand . . . but it MIGHT have been a jellyfish, and you should run from it. RUN! RUN NOW!
(There are other things to be scared of. If you require it, I will provide an entire list of MJ’s THINGS TO BE SCARED OF IN THE SUMMERTIME. My list is very thorough and will keep you alive longer. Let me know if I should put it up.)
Updates tomorrow. Now, I’m off to my reading. I promise not to call any of you any rude names if you show up, b****tes.
posted by Maureen at
11:33 PM
38 Comments
