3 Mikes in the classroom was oddly one too many
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- April 9, 2018
- 1861
Fourth grade provided my first glimpse into the world of punitive homework. As the new kid in class, I had already been at the epicenter of a battle over, of all things, my name. So I knew a little bit about my teacher, a nun who fervently believed that having three Mikes in her classroom was one too many.
This, as loyal readers may attest, did not go over well with my mother, who never shied away from a fight, especially when she believed she had right on her side.
I wasn’t present at that summit meeting in the fall of 1964, but that face-to-face confrontation between my mom and my teacher certainly impacted my life from then on.
It wasn’t as if I’d done anything wrong, the sister said.
“But you’re punishing him anyway,” countered my mother. “He didn’t name himself, unlike you and your ilk.”
Mom could definitely drop bombs.
Nuns, for the uninitiated, traditionally took on new identities when taking their final vows, which was pretty strange, now that I think about it.
It was like joining the witness protection program or something. Sister Hope might have been born Mary Jones for all we knew.
But that’s not the point. The Catholic Church back then was nothing if not bound by centuries of imposed obedience, an adherence to a compendium of age-old wisdom that would soon be challenged by the tsunami of the Second Vatican Council.
None of that mattered to me. All I wanted to know was what my name would be on Monday morning.
“Well,” Mom said, “it won’t be Mike.”
I nodded. “Stanley then?” I asked.
She shook her head and smiled. “How do you like S. Michael?” she asked.
As compromises went, it wasn’t too awful, though it did throw up a certain “rich kid” blockage, something I certainly didn’t deserve.
My father was a teacher. We lived in a rented duplex. My brother and I shared a bedroom. Mom saved Green Stamps. My sister got a Sting-Ray bike. Then again, she was the middle child.
But aside from my teacher, no one called me S. Michael, though when and if I finally finish my novel, I might resurrect the name.
Fourth grade is a pivotal year in any child’s schooling. The first three are mostly there to make sure the kid is capable of learning stuff, most of which had been taught in the home: how to write, how to study, how to get along with others.
But fourth grade is where the rubber eraser hits the road of actual learning, at least that was my experience.
No more finger painting and naps. It’s math, followed by science and English, then social studies and geography and phonics with little recess respites scattered around the day, like oases of rough-and-tumble fun. And of course lunch. I loved lunch.
There were two ladies in our parish who devoted themselves to preparing what amounted to home-cooked meals for nearly 100 kids five days a week, seven months a year. I cannot begin to tell you how wonderful their food was, whether it was Hungarian goulash on a Tuesday or tuna casserole on a Friday. They were saintly women and deserve a place in heaven.
Mom noticed. Of course she did.
“Not hungry?” she’d asked us kids as we sat around the supper table, staring at her Hamburger Surprise, a congealing mess.
“Had seconds at lunch,” I’d say. “Maybe a salad … please?”
So being a fourth-grader in a new town was never simple; then again it probably wasn’t supposed to be.
One Friday afternoon then, it came to pass that someone had done something to upset the nun who sat in judgment of us all. I’d like to say I can remember the specifics of the supposed infraction, but that’d be a lie. And if there’s one thing I learned back there in elementary school, it was this: You’d never get away with fabricating the truth.
A good thing by all reasonable standards, but until you’ve been punished for something you probably didn’t do, it’s pretty harsh.
So Sister I Won’t Call You Mike addressed the class a few minutes before the final bell. “Unless one of you confesses,” she said, serious as a mortal sin, “you’ll all pay the price.”
This, my friends, was the genesis of my Catholic guilt, an affliction I carry to this very day. Even as the root cause remains buried in my memory, never to be unearthed, I will always remember the consequence.
“Very well,” our wimpled dictator ruled, “you will all be assigned a task to be completed by Monday morning.”
We held our collective breath, wondering what “task” she had in mind. She was nothing if not unpredictable.
“You will take a sheet of paper,” she said, “and write on it one hundred times, ‘I Must Obey.’”
When I told Mom, she just laughed. “Well, S. Michael,” she said, “you can have that knocked out by supper time. Use your best penmanship.”
She paused. “Was it something you did that caused all this fuss?”
I just stood there, smiling, not saying a word.
“I sure hope so,” my mother said.
Mike Dewey can be reached at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. He invites you to join the fun on his Facebook page.