Ping!
Ping!
I remember “the Penguin” from the Blues Brothers. She totally epitomized the nuns I had in the 1950s. There was one nun I had in 5th grade who looked just like the “Penguin”. She was a Benedictine nun and she used the yardstick mostly on the boys. There was one boy in our class who wouldn’t do something he was supposed to do, so she told him to go to the principal’s office. He just sad there and wouldn’t move, so she kept smacking him on the thigh with the yardstick. He wouldn’t budge. Finally, she took his books and piled them on his desk and told him to leave the classroom. He swatted the books down all over the floor. She was furious! I don’t remember what happened after that, only I don’t remember seeing him in our class any more after that.
I was raised with the old nuns....rulers and all. I even boarded at a military school that was run by nuns. I love them to death. Yes they were tough, but so were my parents. As kids, we learned to get around our parents, as we did with the nuns. Not much but we got away with quite a bit. At least we thought we did.
I think today we would do well to have them back.
Many of the nuns started teaching right out of the novitiate. They were about 20 years old and were put in a classroom with 50 kids. At night they went to school earn their college degrees and learn how to be a teacher. Many years later, at a high school reunion, I discovered that one of my high school classmates was the brother of the nun who taught me in the fifth grade. He told me how old she was. She was 21 years old when she taught me and she was in her second year of teaching. She taught us how to diagram sentences.
I’ll tell ya what... when I was a kid, going to a Lootrin school, those teachers were right on up there with the nuns.
Whoooo boy. And we’re all better off for it!
Speaking of nuns, who could ever forget Cheech & Chong’s “Sister Mary Elephant”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa3HXdqNWIM
Being hit on the hands with a ruler was my experience years ago in parochial school. When the nun told you not to turn around or look sideways, you knew the consequences if you were caught disobeying. For what it's worth, grades 1-5 were straight "A" years for my report cards.
I recall disobedient boys being told to bend over and hold their ankles while swatted on the rear with a BOLO (piece of wood with attached rubber band and ball removed). There were, however, few disruptions in any of those classes. Children learned and teachers (nuns) taught.
My aunt was a nun and during the summertime we drove to visit her and she gave my siblings and myself toys she had confiscated during the prior school year (a form of redistribution - from my adult standpoint).
