Surviving Catholic grade school was no small feat.
Strict nuns. Rulers across the knuckles. Monthly confession. Mortal sins. Venial sins. Latin Mass.
With more than 150 years of combined Catholic education in our family, we’ve collected enough stories to fill a church.
And probably several confessionals.
Don’t Chew the Host
Before First Communion, the nuns made one thing absolutely clear:
“DO NOT CHEW THE HOST.”
Naturally, I chewed it.
I had a dentist appointment the following week and was terrified he’d find Jesus stuck between my teeth and have to chisel Him out.
Bless Me, Father
We went to confession once a month.
I quickly developed a standard inventory:
Bad words—20 times.
Disobeyed parents—10.
Hit my brother—twice.
Lied—three times.
My usual sentence was three Hail Marys, three Our Fathers and three Glory Bes.
Impure thoughts?
Never mentioned them.
I figured the priest would smash through the screen, grab me by the neck and sentence me to multiple rosaries.
We also learned quickly which priest to choose.
The Monsignor was brutal. Strong reprimands. Heavy sentences.
His confessional was empty while the lines for the other priests stretched around the Stations of the Cross.
The Nuns Had Rules
The nuns were determined to keep us away from sin.
Especially the mortal variety.
A few of their precautions:
If a girl sat on a boy’s lap, there had to be a phone book between them.
And not the phone book from some town with a population of 200.
We’re talking Chicago Yellow Pages.
Girls weren’t supposed to wear shiny black patent-leather shoes because apparently boys might see reflections of their underwear.
And ravioli?
Suspicious.
Looked too much like pillows.
My Talking Problem
I never stopped talking in class.
Maybe I was destined for sales.
The nuns tried everything.
Ruler across the knuckles.
Chalk-covered eraser in my mouth.
Soap.
Sister Pascal once lost track of time and left the soap in my mouth for 20 minutes.
I was blowing Palmolive bubbles.
Her last resort was dumping a cup of BBs down the hallway and making me pick them up.
When I finished, she dumped them again.
Eventually I got braces with a rubber band designed to pull back my protruding front teeth.
I discovered that if I opened my mouth just right, I could launch that rubber band across the classroom.
My target?
The big white target on Sister Pascal’s chest.
Three direct hits nearly sent her to confession.
Altar Boy Adventures
Naturally, I became an altar boy.
This was back when Mass was in Latin and we were expected to memorize all the responses.
We didn’t.
We either faked it or spoke in tongues.
The only one I remembered was:
“Et cum spiritu tuo.”
I thought it was God’s phone number.
We also carried the water and wine to the altar.
It didn’t take long to learn the priest’s preferred recipe:
Lots of wine. Half a drop of water.
Some priests celebrated three Masses on Sunday.
By the third one, our altar-boy duties occasionally included helping Father negotiate the steps.
We also served funerals.
At one burial, an altar boy was leading the procession carrying a huge brass crucifix.
He tripped.
And fell directly into the open grave.
The priest leaned over and whispered angrily:
“Get out of the grave!”
The kid scrambled back up.
Without the crucifix.
The priest looked down again.
“Get your ass back in that grave and get the crucifix!”
Even the mourners couldn’t hold it together.
There was a cross section of snickers.
Limbo
Limbo fascinated me.
If you weren’t baptized, you apparently didn’t go to the hotspot down south, weren’t being rehabilitated in Purgatory, and weren’t hanging around with the goody-two-shoes in Heaven.
Personally, I pictured Limbo differently.
Sunny skies. Ocean views. A tiki bar with unlimited margaritas.
And every afternoon, Chubby Checker performing “Limbo Rock.”
I just hoped Jimmy Buffett had somehow missed baptism.
The Only Road to Heaven
The nuns, priests and Baltimore Catechism made one thing perfectly clear:
Catholicism was the interstate to Heaven.
No alternate routes.
This worried us because our Jewish neighbors, the Altmans, were wonderful people.
Apparently they weren’t going to make the cut.
We felt terrible.
Like all good Catholics
We dropped off a plate of brownies
You Cant Make this stuff up 