Badges of Shame

I attended Catholic schools for the first eight years of my academic experience, not including Kindergarten.  For reasons not made clear to me, the parish in which we lived did not offer Kindergarten.  Perhaps the clergy and administration of St. John of the Cross believed finger painting and circle sitting were best financed by the local public school district.  I am appreciative of their wisdom, as Kindergarten was the only grade in which I was popular with the girls.

Whenever the student body was directed to take up their Indian-style, cross-legged positions on the circle, I would sit at the end opposite the playground doors so I could look through the windows; better for daydreaming.  Yes, I fell into the life of a thinker at an early age. Then Rosemarie, a dusky damsel with long straight dark brown hair and deep soulful eyes would sit on my right. The spot to my left habitually belonged to my Brookside neighbor, Donna Rose.  She had curly red tresses and alabaster skin punctuated with a million dancing freckles.  Beyond them in turn, the girls would take up the rest of our side of the circle and the boys would cluster in the opposite hemisphere.  I do not know why this segregation of the sexes was so natural.  I do not recall anybody questioning the natural order; but there I sat, surrounded by women.  I’m not sure where or when I lost my charm.  And I’m not sure I recognized the opportunity given me. I was probably staring out at the playground conjuring up some strategy for taking another second or two off my tricycle safety track time. Oh, but the days did pass so quickly. Alas, Rosemarie and Donna Rose had both been born into the heathen bosoms of Protestant families. So long my loves… so long.

The next year I found myself in the strictly regimented corps of uniform-clad first graders at St. John’s, ever monitored by the vigilant sisters of the Order of St. Joseph of Orange. I never could reconcile the black and white habit-clad custodians of my education with the pleasant chewable aspirin but I probably tossed it off as another one of the myriad dogmatic mysteries of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.  Worst of all, at recess and lunch time, the boys were unnaturally segregated from the girls.  While the girls were given possession of the asphalt playground for jump rope and hopscotch, we gentlemen were directed to the dirt athletic fields to engage in such vigorous pursuits as baseball, or kickball or any number of ball oriented games that tried one’s ability to maintain the prescribed level of sartorial respectability.

The rules were clear; young men must keep their white shirts neatly tucked inside their salt-and-pepper corduroy trousers. By contrast the ladies could, if they wished, let shirt tails flow freely over the waistbands of their perfectly pleated plaid skirts. Perhaps the lack of discipline at this early stage of development explains the much discussed pay disparity plaguing society today.

When the sisters rang the bell, it was an indication that we had better return to classroom double time, where the practice of segregation of the sexes continued.  The boys lined up to the right of the door, the girls to the left, waiting for Sister to indicate we could enter the classroom.  Once again, the logic of the segregation escaped me as we were assigned seats in alphabetic order by our last name without regard to sex. The offshoot of this line up practice was the ease with which the nuns could inspect our condition before letting us inside.

On one occasion I was the victim of lax self-policing.  Sister held me back as the other students were allowed to enter.  She then escorted me to the front of the class room and held me up as an example of unkemptness because my shirt tail was flapping frivolously in the breeze. To make a lasting impression on me and drive home the need for good grooming standards for others, I was to wear the badge of shame, the pink ribbon, in my hair for the afternoon session of class.

Out came the ribbon.  Out came the bobby pins.  But these were the days of crew cuts and butch wax.  The ribbon succumbed to gravity and dove straight for the floor.  No matter the application of an ever increasing number of bobby pins, the ribbon would just slide off of my head and onto the floor.  As her frustration grew, Sister began twisting the oversized rosary that the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange wore as a gird about the waist of their habits, and the fires of purgatory seem to glow in her eyes.  Up until this time, I hadn’t experienced any anxiety about the public humiliation; after all, a laugh is a laugh, even if one is cast the buffoon.  But now I began to fear she would use her rosary belt to fix the ribbon to my greasy Brylcreem skull wrapping it around my throat for good measure.

In a final stroke of genius, she grabbed the scotch tape and applied six or seven strands to keep the ribbon in place.  So I sat for the rest of the school day, applying my effort to scholastic achievement adorned with the badge of shame.

The windows at St. John of the Cross parochial school were placed high in the walls of the classrooms so as to prevent distraction.  But that didn’t stop me from looking up at an angle allowing a view of the palm tree fronds swaying in the afternoon winds.  I don’t remember where I was, mentally, on that particular day as opposed to any other.  But as usual, the hypnotic rhythm of the leaves took me far away from the here and now.  So much so that when I arrived home, after a twenty-minute bus ride, after a block-long walk from the bus stop, and my mom asked me why I had a pink bow taped to my head, I honestly answered, “I don’t know.”