Never Mess with a Nun Named Leo

    Life has a tendency of turning on a dime. At the end of seventh grade, my first year at St. Francis Xavier, I received the Daughters of the American Revolution Good Citizens award. Sometimes being the new kid on the block, the unknown, has its advantages.

By the next year, that award was old news.

It began as a casual observation, thrown out in haste, and obviously, with little or no thought given to the consequences. After spending most of the afternoon standing in the back of the room as punishment, my three classmates and I had been called to our teacher’s desk to explain our continued misbehavior. Had we shown a sufficient degree of remorse, apologized and promised it wouldn’t happen again, we could have been on our way, but instead we chose to dig that hole that our parents had always warned us about.

The question was a very simple one.

“What do you boys think you’re doing?”

Schoolboys have been asked this question for ages, and the correct response has always been the same. Look down at your feet, shuffle them around a little, shrug your shoulders, shake your head from side to side and then say, “I dunno.”

That is the only acceptable answer. No one really expects you to incriminate yourself. “What do you boys think you’re doing?” has never been a question in search of an answer, but rather a rhetorical assertion that whatever you were doing—and no one really needs an explanation—but whatever it was, was the wrong thing to be doing.

Our teacher was only interested in getting that question out of the way in order to move on to the punishment phase. The request was a formality, an icebreaker as if school were a social event and breaking the rules a party game to be treated as such. Smart kids know this. Of course, smart kids don’t get in trouble.

I accept much of the blame for what happened next because I was the one who responded to her inquiry. My foolish comeback didn’t even answer the question she had posed, but reluctantly, students don’t get do-overs in the classroom the way they do on the playground.

“The other eighth grade is better than ours,” I said, in response to the question, “What do you boys think you’re doing?”

 That was our answer as if to imply that whatever it was that we boys were doing, we were doing because we were in the wrong eighth grade, and if we were in the right eighth grade, we wouldn’t be doing it. The truth is, we were very happy in her eighth grade and got along well with our classmates. We were simply looking for someone else to blame for our bad behavior.

 “What do you mean?” our teacher asked, appearing honestly confused, but actually just handing us a bigger shovel to dig an even bigger hole.

The four of us, taking turns and answering in bit and pieces, and starts and stumbles, were able to convey the vague suggestion that the other eighth grade teacher was fairer, more fun, more understanding and that the other eighth grade got along better with their teacher, learned more, and enjoyed themselves more.

Now would be a good time to make clear that we were not just talking to an eighth-grade teacher, but rather to the eighth grade teacher who also happened to be the principal. Equally important, we were students in Saint Francis Xavier Elementary School, and the teacher/principal happened to also be a nun named Sister Leo Marie.

I don’t think enough consideration is given to the thought process that a nun goes through in choosing a name. Our birth names are given to us and we learn to live with them. I like to think we all eventually grow into our names by making whatever adjustments are needed to make the names work. However, when a person is given the opportunity to choose their own name—well, I think the name they choose says something about them.

St. Leo, a theological scholar and the first Pope to be called “The Great,” had been pope for 21 years when he died at the age of 61, which in the fifth century was a lifetime and then some. These are great—no pun intended—accomplishments, but Pope Leo is best remembered for meeting Attila the Hun at the gates of Rome in 452 and persuading him to turn back from his invasion of Italy at a time when the Vandals were conquering the entire civilized world and the Roman Empire was in rapid decline.

So there you have it. Our teacher chose the name Leo, after St. Leo, the only man in history to have ever gotten the upper hand on Attila the Hun. I didn’t know these facts at the time, didn’t realize the significance of her name choice. I just thought Leo was a weird name for a girl.

Nevertheless, when she could have chosen any name in the book, she chose the name of one of history’s great leaders, and I chose to tell her that the other eighth grade teacher was better than her.

For a moment, she didn’t say anything and neither did we. For all our missteps, finally, we knew enough to shut up.

We waited, and waited, and waited.

Finally, she spoke.

“Well,” she said, “it seems to me that if the other eighth grade is better, the other eighth grade teacher is better, and you can learn more in the other eighth grade, then by all means you should go to the other eighth grade.

“I want you boys to bring all your books and papers home, and when you return on Monday, go over to the other eighth grade and ask if she’d be willing to let you join her class.”

Wow! We looked at each other in disbelief. That was definitely better than we had expected.

Her plan sounded reasonable enough, although we should have been suspicious. Sister Leo Marie was the principal and certainly didn’t need the other teacher’s approval. Everyone, including the other nuns, did what Sister Leo Marie told them to do—except for the four of us, of course.

Likewise, if she was sending us over there, why did we even have to ask if it was okay? These were both good questions, but we were too busy savoring our victory to ask them.

We packed our books and left the room. Outside, we convinced each other that we had done the right thing. We really did think that the other eighth grade was better. Not only that, but when word got out that we had actually stood up to Sister Leo Marie—not just stood up to her, but actually gotten the better of her, well we would be heroes of sorts.

I lived in a different parish from the other three boys, so while each of them had short five or ten-minute walks, I was looking at about an eight block walk to catch a city bus, and then another three or four-block walk before I’d be home. I said goodbye to my buddies and began my trek home, using the whole 20-minute bus ride home to figure out a way to sneak my stuff into the house without my parents knowing, and make sure it stayed hidden all weekend.

We had a lot of books in those days and I’d never once brought this many books home in the middle of the school year. In addition to the books I had notebooks, binders, pencils, rulers and loose papers stashed in my shirt and pockets, as backpacks were very much non-existent in 1960. We still carried everything on our hips or bundled in our arms. My supposed victory over Sister Leo Marie seemed to literally have come with a lot of unforeseen baggage.

If I was successful in sneaking my books into the house, I’d have the whole weekend to devise a plan for getting them out of the house on Monday.

In spite of the difficulties, I actually thought I’d succeeded with my ruse when I put the last book under the bed. Unfortunately, I didn’t suspect then what I know now. You can’t sneak anything past your parents. If you think you have, it is only because they are letting you think that. In this particular case, my mother chose not to let it ride, and I had to come clean with the whole story—a story, not the story.

I explained how some new kids had come to our class and it wasn’t until they were already in the room that the teacher discovered we didn’t have enough seats. Rather than make the new kids, who had already moved once, move a second time, the teacher asked for volunteers to go to the other eighth grade and a couple of us said we didn’t mind. Since it was late in the day, we just decided to bring everything home for the weekend and start fresh on Monday. It seemed like the right thing to do, I added—still digging.

“What did you do to get in trouble?”  My mother asked.

Sometimes, when you’re a kid, it’s a waste of time to even try to come up with a good lie because no one seems to appreciate the effort.     

So I told her the truth—what I had said to Sister Leo Marie and what Sister Leo Marie had said to us—and she took it surprisingly well.

Seemed all the adults were taking remarkably well, what I was throwing out, but those were trusting times. We hadn’t yet become a society that questioned everyone’s motives or were suspicious of everyone’s actions. I was probably just a tad guilty myself of accepting everyone else’s acceptance. I should have been asking myself a few questions.

“Well, we’ll see what happens,” was all Mom said.

The good news about having been discovered so quickly the previous Friday was that I didn’t have to worry about sneaking everything out on Monday. My mother helped me gather my books and was encouraging as she said goodbye. I supposed she could have driven me to school rather than have me take the bus, but this was, after all, still my mess. The good news was that it would soon be over.

The four of us met in front of our new eighth grade, which happened to be in a different building, atop a flight of stairs. We were excited about meeting our new classmates and our new teacher, who had undoubtedly been made aware of all the praise we had showered upon her. At the sound of the bell, the class marched in and took their seats. When they were all in the room, our new teacher saw us out of the corner of her eye as she was about to close the door, paused and slowly approached us.

“Can I help you boys?”

“Sister Leo Marie sent us over to ask if we could be in your class,” we all mumbled, saying no more than what we thought we had to say.

“Visit for just the day?” she asked, sounding very confused.

“No Sister. Every day. We want to transfer to your eighth grade.”

Sister Anonymous—I don’t even remember her name, which is strange considering just a few days earlier I had claimed she was the best teacher, but she looked at us as she would an Avon Lady turning up at the convent door to sell cosmetics.

“I see,” she said, which was a little less than we were expecting.

Again, just as it had been with Sister Leo Marie, we knew we had said enough and hers would be the next words spoken. We just didn’t know when they would come.

Nuns had a wonderful way of making you wait—not just wait, but also squirm and sweat while waiting. We never knew what they would do or say because nuns weren’t from our world, and so, whatever they did do or say always caught us off guard.

I never really understood nuns. I’m not sure if our parents or even the priests’ did. I’m not sure the nuns understood each other. They were obviously very, very good women, dedicated women who had only our best interest at heart. But they could seem very vindictive at times, almost relishing the fear they instilled in vulnerable children, and they could really hurt you with those paddles, razor-sharp rulers, and God knows what else they had hidden under those habits—habits, what kind of a name is that for a dress? 

     At times, they could be very silly and fun-loving. I knew a nun who once got slightly inebriated, in our own house for God’s sake, but for the most part nuns were uncommonly serious. They were capable of staring us down from the other end of the pew in a way that’d send chills up and down our spines, and convince us that our life on earth was nothing more than a rest stop on the road to eternal damnation. In a world where everyone and everything has its place, nuns were sort of out there in no man’s land.

Fully aware of what we were up against, we waited in silence, and continued to wait until finally, she spoke.

“I’m going to have to think it over, boys. Why don’t you sit down out here on the steps, and as soon as I’ve made a decision, I’ll let you know.”

Maybe we had sprung this on her rather suddenly, but the whole matter didn’t seem that complicated to us—certainly not so complicated that it would take her three days to arrive at her decision, but that turned out to be the case.

Three days that we had to sit on those steps, three days that I had to carry my books home on the bus and return with the next day, three days that I had to invent newer and bigger lies to tell my mother. Even the bus driver and other passengers were beginning to wonder what was going on.

For three days, we sat outside what we had hoped would be our new classroom, only to have to explain what we didn’t understand ourselves to everyone that walked by—including Monsignor on several occasions. Worst of all, we couldn’t figure out what this nun had against us. After all, we had chosen her because she was the best teacher and her eighth grade the better one. Our anger and frustration with her was building.

She wasn’t playing fair. Students from both eighth grade classes were joking us, and she didn’t seem to care. By the third day, we were mad as hell at her and at each other. I was even mad at the bus driver for the cynical look he gave me every day I took my seat on his bus. We decided we wouldn’t want to be in her eighth grade if it were the last eighth grade on earth, which it practically was. Then, just as Sister Leo Marie’s class was starting to look better, a miracle happened, maybe not a miracle, but something that caught us completely off guard.

“Okay, boys,” she said on the morning of the fourth day, “I think it would be all right for you to join our class. Please come in and find some seats.”

Four days. Jesus only needed three days to rise from the dead, but we needed four days just to switch class rooms. Even the Baltimore Catechism couldn’t explain that one, and it always had an answer for everything.

The four of us looked at each other, speechless. Just when we were ready to go back even though we doubted we could, we suddenly learned we’d been accepted where we’d finally decided we no longer wanted to be. 

     Those diabolical nuns were sticking it to us as sure as Lucifer would one day be poking us with his pitchfork in the depths of Hell—if the nuns had anything to say about it. Around this time, it dawned on us that these nuns lived in the same house together, ate their meals sitting around the same table, and had probably been planning their whole strategy while we were sitting on the steps for three days. Maybe diabolical was too good a word. 

Inside her class, we discovered we were the heroes that we had expected to be almost a week earlier—sort of. Actually, we were more like novelty items, which was still satisfying for four eighth-grade refugees that no one seemed to want.

There were two cute twins in my new class. I think one of them kind of liked me because she was giving me the eye, which in my unique situation was like two girls giving me the eye, since I didn’t have a clue how to tell them apart. Had I been in their class from day one, this might not have been a problem, but by this stage, all kinds of “what ifs” and “if only” were floating through my head.

For the first few days, things couldn’t have been better, but the initial excitement over our arrival in their class quickly subsided, and it wasn’t long before we became less a novelty and more of a joke.

     We discovered that just because two classes teach the same material and finish at the same point in June, didn’t mean they are necessarily at the same point on any given day in any given week during the school year. Furthermore, we had just spent the better part of a week sitting on the steps not being taught anything, so we were a little bit out of sync, out of touch, and soon to discover out of luck.

More and more, Sister Heartless chose us—even when our hands weren’t raised, to answer questions we didn’t know the answers to.

More and more, we were sent to the blackboard to solve math problems we didn’t understand.

More and more, our new classmates were snickering behind our backs, and more and more, we began regretting the situation we’d created.

The twin had even stopped giving me the eye, which since I still didn’t know one from the other was like being dumped twice.

Doing the right thing is something 13-year-olds generally shy away from, but after a week of making fools of ourselves, we had no choice.

The four of us got together after class one day and headed over to Sister Leo Marie’s classroom. We’d been upfront and honest, with her a few weeks ago—to a fault and to our detriment, and we now hoped that a sort of bond born out of mutual respect would lead her to reconsider her punishment—and make no mistake, we now knew we were being punished by a master.

Who were we kidding? Mutual respect had nothing to do with it. We were begging for our old desks back and that was all there was to it.

“Sister,” we said, meekly and respectfully like the little choirboys that we were not, “if it would be all right with you, we think we’d like to come back to your class.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s just not working out. We were wrong. We made a mistake.” 

This is where Sister Leo Marie really surprised us. We were ready for another long waiting period, fully expecting now to sit outside her room—our ex-room, for a week, or however long it took. We had taken all our books with us in anticipation of having to bring them home again. We were even prepared for expulsion since there were only two eighth grades and we had pretty much declared we didn’t like either one.

“I suppose if you want your old seats back, we can do that. Is that what you want?”

Boy did we! We were back with our old classmates the very next day—novelties again, but now in a nice way.

We realized we’d made a terrible mistake, but she never mentioned the incident. We didn’t talk about it either. A decade later, at the Military Entrance Processing Station in Buffalo, I ran into one of my partners in crime, and even then, neither of us spoke about the week Sister Leo Marie taught us a lesson we’d never forget.

She had barely spoken a word during the incident, and nothing afterwards, but had clearly demonstrated who was boss, and who the best teacher was.

We also learned an important history lesson. We learned how Attila the Hun must have felt when he came up against the other Leo.