Still Eighth Grade
Except for 7a, previous parts are not required to enjoy this part...
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| Not breakfast at my house, then or now. Image by Jo Justino from Pixabay
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"Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn." -Fulton J. Sheen
Dear Gentlereaders,
Our last installment of Me, the Early Years ended with your's truly, a child of inner-city working-class parents, having been randomly/accidentally placed in the "smart" eighth grade of St. Ursula's Catholic grade school and I was about to make first contact with the spawn of suburban middle-middle and upper-middle class parents.
With the help of a kid/guy (we didn't have dudes back then) named Ed, who served as my first guide in this strange new world, I was able to get my feet under me in relatively short order. Ed was sitting in the front row of the classroom I was ushered into and there was an empty desk next to him.
I was told to sit there by Sister _______ and he, who was obviously very cool as indicated by his red velour pullover top with leather laces where I was expecting a tie to be, not to mention his grey corduroy pants (cords were very "in" that year), took it upon himself to provide an orientation via muted conversations between the various and sundry activities needed to get a new school year rolling.
The answer to one of my first questions was yes, the neckties I hated wearing were technically required. Big BUT, if one didn't get carried away, and depending on the nun/teacher, and if you were in at least sixth grade (seventh was safer), and if our aforementioned universally feared principal, Sister Gabriel, didn't decide you were a barbarian who hadn't yet been entirely civilized and took it upon herself to do so — you could gently press against that particular rule.
I don't know about nowadays, but back then attempting to successfully navigate the many Rules&Regs of the Catholic education system to secure what limited freedom of action/behavior was possible while avoiding getting in trouble — or possibly being sentenced to a stretch in purgatory upon your demise — was as complicated as what I'm led to believe goes on behind the scenes at the Vatican.
For example, to try and detail the series of maneuvers I had to carefully and subtly execute to get out of that spot in the front of the classroom, where I had absolutely no desire to be, would take up an entire column.
Being in the "smart" eighth grade came with certain subtle, unspoken privileges. We were treated a bit more like high schoolers than the other eighth-grade class. We also studied Algebra 1 (taught by Sister...Anthony?), traditionally a ninth-grade subject, at least back then.
{Another teacher whose name you can't remember? Did you fall off your bike that year?}
Not that I remember, but you may be on to something. Anyone wearing a helmet to ride a bike back then would've been considered a sissy and subject to much in the way of verbal abuse.
Not being mathematically inclined, and not being particularly interested in the subject (traits that continue to this very day), I made it through by the skin of my teeth. I spent a lot of time on the phone with a friend named...Roger? doing Algebra homework together; he served as my tutor. The following school year, ninth grade in a public high school, I had Algebra 1 all over again and it was a piece of caramel apple pie thanks to Roger.
Speaking of sissies, I'll wager the boys in the normal eighth grade thought the boys in my eighth grade were a bunch of sissies but I've no memory of any verbal abuse along those lines. It really was a remarkable school year from my perspective. You might think it would've motivated me to study hard in high school, but it didn't. It was this particular group of kids, none of whom I maintained contact with once they continued on with parochial education and I switched to a public school.
The "smart" eighth grade consisted of the kids who were either smarter by nature and/or willing to work hard to get good grades. This was not a thing at my previous school. Smart kids, average kids, and certifiable brutes all shared the same classroom and the same teacher, usually a nun. Present-day Wokies would no doubt applaud the exact same curriculum for all.
This might sound like a recipe for disaster, and nowadays apparently is, but back then all the nuns and lay teachers I was aware of ran a tight ship, and (in most cases at least) the parents were on board. It wasn't till ninth grade, when I found myself in a public high school, that I experienced weak and vacillating teachers who could barely maintain control of their classrooms.
But the empire still struck back.
For example, I didn't personally witness it but Miss H. (she definitely wasn't a Ms.), who taught ninth grade (Pennsylvania) history, and may have been the most boring teacher I've ever known, fled her classroom in tears one day and didn't return for a week. This resulted in several boys being paddled by the onsite enforcer, the assistant principal.
{Paddled!}
Yes, high school boys were still being paddled in the late sixties/early seventies, at least in my world. Fortunately, no one was killed. My Health class (boys only) in high school was taught by Mr. F. who was the football coach and a gym teacher. Pissing him off in class would result in being forced to do enough push-ups to make sure you never did it again.
For the record, I don't think girls got paddled though...
{You're getting ahead of yourself again, Sparky, eighth grade, remember?}
Right. How do I explain this? From my perspective at the time, the important difference between the two eighth grades was primarily cultural? A matter of temperament? Maturity? Yes, all of the above, and more. This was the one year out of my twelve years of formal mandatory education I worked my bum off, just so I could stay.
A few hours later I found myself standing in that field between the school and my house mentioned in our last episode and talking to some of my new classmates, both male and female. I had been successively (not successfully) madly in love with three of these young women by the following June, but being a confirmed bachelor, I played my cards close to the vest and never revealed my feelings to any of them.
I was welcomed with open arms even though I'm sure that at least the girls could tell my clothes were of Spiegel Catalog quality. This continued even after they knew I lived in that very modest house that could be seen from where we were standing.
(Ironically, by the end of the 1970s, Spiegel transformed from low-end clothing that could be bought with high-priced credit to high-end, high-priced women's fashions because Kmart ate their lunch.)
Male members of the other eighth grade, being more normal than me and the rest of the 13-year-old boys in my eighth grade, were running around being normal young men who much preferred being outside than inside a classroom, bouncing off each other and burning off excess energy, dealing with what nowadays would be called their toxic masculinity.
There was at least one of them who probably stayed inside (we never discussed it) but I didn't get to know him till we were forced to bond together to survive public high school and who lived only a few blocks from me, although I didn't know it at the time. In the unlikely event there's a high school version of this series of columns — Mark and Glenn Visit Hell (The high school years) — you'll meet him.
I know for a fact that nobody, male or female, was hiding in the woods behind the school smoking cigarettes, or other things. St. Ursula's was larger than St. John's but still small enough that everyone was up on everyone else's business.
I have no memory of what the young women from the other eighth-grade class got up to; In fact, I don't remember if there were girls in that class, and I was acutely aware of members of the opposite sex of all ages at the time, but I imagine there must have been...
{Ain'tcha glad you're not like that anymore?}
The pot no longer boils but has never stopped simmering.
Strangely, I also don't remember there being much in the way of conflict between the two versions of eighth-grade boys, although there was some. We were carefully supervised and if you've got to catch a bus to get home you can't agree to fight after school if you have no other way to get there.
I can't remember if we went outside during recess, I don't think so, and there was no playground equipment. But at lunchtime, we could hang out in the cafeteria, return to the classroom to read or study, or go outside (weather permitting).
{What's with the read?}
Well, I had been into reading for several years at this point. My closest new friends from another planet also enjoyed reading. They also were news nerds, loved rock music (which was still at the beginning of its temporary glory days), and were enthusiastic, cis-gendered heterosexuals like myself constrained by societal and religious constraints that weren't giving up without a fight (a fight they would lose in short order).
I had found my people! Briefly.
On their own, they had organized an informal book club of sorts and for some reason, they were currently obsessed with Agatha Christie novels (whom I had never heard of at the time) and borrowed, traded, and discussed them enthusiastically. In short order, I was reading a loaned novel. No, I don't remember which one, it's been a long time since I was a fan of cozy mysteries.
{You were a simp!}
I was a shy, reserved, idealistic, semi-nerd who had one enjoyable school year who would go on to never really fit in anywhere although I've spent my entire life trying to do so via adopting this, that, or even that lifestyle or career and who shot himself in the foot, financially speaking, because I never thought twice about burning bridges in search of, it.
I'm now a cynical old fart subject to occasional flashes of light who knows what it is but can't tell you what it is effectively, I can only point at it with my feeble scribbles.
{Yikes! Talk about getting ahead of yourself! What happened to eighth grade?}
Good point, Dana. I should have saved those two sentences for a big finish. Well, let's wrap this baby up, I've already gone on too long.
As mentioned in the previous column, I think that Sister _______ was preparing us for attending a Catholic high school, and how to "take it up a notch." This is pure speculation on my part but in retrospect, it seems obvious. She not only taught us specific subjects, she also taught us a methodology for how to go about dealing with any subject, a study system if you will.
She followed up relentlessly and made sure we were all using her system. We weren't specifically graded for following the system but it was made abundantly clear we better be. It worked for me, I was never demoted to the other eighth grade.
I think I now know why I can't remember her name. She wasn't someone to be trifled with, but we took her for granted, we were obnoxious adolescent know-it-alls anxious to get on with what would no doubt be very exciting lives. She was just another nun... and a humble woman who happened to take her vocation seriously, a possible lifestyle choice we weren't even remotely aware of.
If my parents could have afforded the tuition, not to mention North Catholic High School was located on the Nor'side ah Pittsburgh, and getting there (no car, remember?) would've been a problem, I likely would've had a radically different life than the one I've had. Not necessarily better, but certainly different.
[Note: North Catholic lives on but is no longer in the city. It's now located in an expensive Northern Burb, is coed, and costs about 15k per school year.]
Also, being young and stupid, having had enough of ties, nuns, and priests, and being caught up in the whole late sixties thing (we Boomers were supposed to fix the world, not screw it up) I was looking forward to public high school — till I got there.
Sister _______ made a point of speaking individually to all her students on eighth-grade graduation day (there were only about 30, maybe 35 of us) for a few minutes, and having just assumed I was headed to North Catholic, was shocked to find out I wasn't.
She had tears in her eyes when she wished me the best, which shocked me, but the significance of her tears was lost on me at the time. God bless you, sister, wherever you are.
Colonel Cranky
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