Brother Broken

Here's Johnny! ... this goes waayyyy back, like 1963...

I wasn’t allowed to follow John the day he started school. I wanted to go with him, but Mom held me back. I had a difficult time being left behind. Going to school was hard for John, too.

The school was run by nuns, even though it was a public school. The nuns taught Grades 1 through 12, and attendance peaked at about 120 students. Most students were bussed in from the country, which meant John met new kids.

School administrators had an ass-backwards way of staffing teachers. Grade 1 students should have a kid-friendly teacher, but that was not the way schools operated in Northern Saskatchewan. Perhaps it was done on purpose, to have the strictest nun initiate the new students—a sure-fire way to pre-establish order in the school room.

John told me a bit about his first day of school. It sounded like he approached the classroom and lingered in the doorway. The teacher nun was waiting inside to greet all the new kids. She told John where to go sit, but he wasn’t ready to sit down. He wandered the classroom curious to investigate his new surroundings. The nun narrowed her eyes and spoke to him sternly: “Sit down.”

The teacher wore the nun’s official black habit, which gave her stunted frame the illusion of magnitude. Her skirts were starched stiff. They rustled and crinkled as she walked, betraying her sneaking-up game. A polished silver cross hung from a braided cord around her neck. The cross radiated where the sun’s rays caught the metal, and it looked like lasers were shooting out of her chest. The white hood of her veiled headpiece fit snug against her wrinkly little face, making it hard to determine if she had any hair. She used her put-down eyes to compel obedience from her students. Her manner was not tender, which bolstered her reputation as a hard-ass teacher.

On another day, John explained how he got into trouble without even trying.

“Monsieur Jean Luc,” she chided him, “do you have ants in your pants?”

A commotion outside the classroom had drawn John’s attention. He heard the sound of laughter and a ball bouncing down the hallway. Students were going outside to play soccer, and he fidgeted in his seat, resisting the urge to join them. The nun realized he was focused on the door instead of on the lesson. She said to him, “Maybe you would like to spend some of that energy cleaning chalkboards during recess.”

John said she had to have been in a good mood that day for her to be so lenient. When it came to discipline, cleaning chalkboards was the equivalent of scoring A on a spelling test. Unfortunately for John, the usual penance was a yardstick to the backside or a leather strap across the wrist.