Nun So Many
by Brian Morrison
Genre: Memoir
Swearwords: None.
Description: The terrifying ordeal of being taught at school by nuns.
_____________________________________________________________________
I often find myself thinking back to my young teenage years, and how unlucky I was to have been a pupil at a Roman Catholic secondary school. ‘Secondary school’ had always been the correct title for those periods in education between the eleven plus exam and the O-level exams. Kids today have been Americanised to such an extent that ‘Secondary school’ has now been renamed ‘High School’. Also, in case you haven’t noticed, the Christmas season has now morphed into the ‘Holiday season’ and just lately I was saddened to learn that our good old ‘Ne’erday’ has transformed into a very corny, and suspiciously American sounding, ‘NYE’.
What has all this to do with my young teenage years at a Roman Catholic school? I hear you ask. Well, the truth is, absolutely nothing, but I have a theory that at that time, circa 1971, a very astute image creator and film director may well have been hanging around my school gates with a notepad in his hand. Let me be blunt. I am convinced that the creation of that notorious movie villain, Darth Vader, was directly due to observations made of the nuns who taught, and mentally scarred, kids like me. George Lucas learned a thing or two in Kilwinning, let me tell you!
Nuns did not take up all of the teaching duties at that particular school, only a small amount of positions, but the memories of them are embedded in my mind like an unmovable force from the dark side itself. We were totally unprepared for what was about to happen to us. Everyone knew what a nun looked like, but in that first year in secondary school, someone from high above – I don’t know if it would have been a mother superior, the local education authority or even the Vatican – but someone somewhere decreed that the hem line on the nun’s habit was to move from ankle length up to the knee level.
The male pupils were visibly shaken by this surprise ‘change of habit’, as it were. We didn’t even know that nuns had legs! In our class, we discovered that the French teacher (a nun, of course, who shall remain nameless) had incredibly hairy pins. We couldn’t take our eyes off them. The dark wispy moustache that nestled on her top lip for the first part of the term should have given it away, but the notion that she had hairy legs – or even legs at all – had evaded us.
As far as secondary teachers went, the nuns were ruthless. They were bad tempered and downright scary. Some of the other more human-like teachers, most notably the males, noticed the terror in our eyes. A few of them jumped on the bandwagon and took to wearing the black student cloaks. These capes hung around their neck like a fictional superhero and swayed in the breeze as they chased you up the corridors like demented Batman lookalikes when you were late for class. (Please note that at that time the real Batman wore a blue cape and not a black one.) Those encounters were frightening, for sure, but a simple scowl from a nun was enough to have you wetting your pants in fear.
It would be nice, would it not, to end this memory on a high note? So I will relate to you one of the few happier stories from that school from hell. One of the ‘Sisters of no mercy’ was quite elderly. She was nearing retirement age, if there is such a state of existence for a nun. Even though she was quite frail, she was still fond of bullying the kids - the boys in particular. We were no angels, of course, and we had adopted a survival instinct that had developed over many years of getting ‘the belt’ as punishment. All the pupils had perfected a certain technique. The normal way to stand for getting ‘six of the best’ was arms outstretched with hands out, palms up and one hand on top of the other. I can credit our gymnastic teacher with the aforementioned technique on how to receive punishment. It all came from our cricket lessons out on the playing fields. One of the tricks of the trade was this. You carefully watched the bowler’s arm, and when you saw it reaching the apex of his delivery thrust – that was the precise moment to lift the bat backwards and reveal the stumps in an almost teasing fashion.
“Bowler’s arm coming up!” the gym teacher used to shout, as he demonstrated the all important movement. It was all about timing. Something similar to a rain dance. That training embedded in each pupil a certain knowledge - a knowledge of when to separate your hands in a sideways motion. This little nun put so much effort into her downswing that it was easy to anticipate the moment of impact.
Nun’s arm coming down!
I could hear our gym teacher saying these words inside my head as I separated my hands at precisely the correct moment. The result would be a ‘fresh air shot’. The leather strap would continue on its downward trajectory until it made contact with flesh. Not my flesh, of course. It was somewhere around the unprotected and hopelessly exposed right knee of the nun. The longer length habit may have offered her some protection. Who knows? I certainly wouldn’t ever want to know what lay beneath the dark one’s uniform. So as a result of me getting six of the strap, the real figure would have been nearer ten; the nun’s knee receiving the remainder.
“Let that be a lesson to you, young man!” she would say as she limped back to her desk in pain.
I am not sure if it was George Lucas or not that I saw peeking through the small window on the classroom door, but, if it was, I am pretty sure that he didn’t employ the ‘cricket move’ in any of his light sabre battles. Pity about that.
Swearwords: None.
Description: The terrifying ordeal of being taught at school by nuns.
_____________________________________________________________________
I often find myself thinking back to my young teenage years, and how unlucky I was to have been a pupil at a Roman Catholic secondary school. ‘Secondary school’ had always been the correct title for those periods in education between the eleven plus exam and the O-level exams. Kids today have been Americanised to such an extent that ‘Secondary school’ has now been renamed ‘High School’. Also, in case you haven’t noticed, the Christmas season has now morphed into the ‘Holiday season’ and just lately I was saddened to learn that our good old ‘Ne’erday’ has transformed into a very corny, and suspiciously American sounding, ‘NYE’.
What has all this to do with my young teenage years at a Roman Catholic school? I hear you ask. Well, the truth is, absolutely nothing, but I have a theory that at that time, circa 1971, a very astute image creator and film director may well have been hanging around my school gates with a notepad in his hand. Let me be blunt. I am convinced that the creation of that notorious movie villain, Darth Vader, was directly due to observations made of the nuns who taught, and mentally scarred, kids like me. George Lucas learned a thing or two in Kilwinning, let me tell you!
Nuns did not take up all of the teaching duties at that particular school, only a small amount of positions, but the memories of them are embedded in my mind like an unmovable force from the dark side itself. We were totally unprepared for what was about to happen to us. Everyone knew what a nun looked like, but in that first year in secondary school, someone from high above – I don’t know if it would have been a mother superior, the local education authority or even the Vatican – but someone somewhere decreed that the hem line on the nun’s habit was to move from ankle length up to the knee level.
The male pupils were visibly shaken by this surprise ‘change of habit’, as it were. We didn’t even know that nuns had legs! In our class, we discovered that the French teacher (a nun, of course, who shall remain nameless) had incredibly hairy pins. We couldn’t take our eyes off them. The dark wispy moustache that nestled on her top lip for the first part of the term should have given it away, but the notion that she had hairy legs – or even legs at all – had evaded us.
As far as secondary teachers went, the nuns were ruthless. They were bad tempered and downright scary. Some of the other more human-like teachers, most notably the males, noticed the terror in our eyes. A few of them jumped on the bandwagon and took to wearing the black student cloaks. These capes hung around their neck like a fictional superhero and swayed in the breeze as they chased you up the corridors like demented Batman lookalikes when you were late for class. (Please note that at that time the real Batman wore a blue cape and not a black one.) Those encounters were frightening, for sure, but a simple scowl from a nun was enough to have you wetting your pants in fear.
It would be nice, would it not, to end this memory on a high note? So I will relate to you one of the few happier stories from that school from hell. One of the ‘Sisters of no mercy’ was quite elderly. She was nearing retirement age, if there is such a state of existence for a nun. Even though she was quite frail, she was still fond of bullying the kids - the boys in particular. We were no angels, of course, and we had adopted a survival instinct that had developed over many years of getting ‘the belt’ as punishment. All the pupils had perfected a certain technique. The normal way to stand for getting ‘six of the best’ was arms outstretched with hands out, palms up and one hand on top of the other. I can credit our gymnastic teacher with the aforementioned technique on how to receive punishment. It all came from our cricket lessons out on the playing fields. One of the tricks of the trade was this. You carefully watched the bowler’s arm, and when you saw it reaching the apex of his delivery thrust – that was the precise moment to lift the bat backwards and reveal the stumps in an almost teasing fashion.
“Bowler’s arm coming up!” the gym teacher used to shout, as he demonstrated the all important movement. It was all about timing. Something similar to a rain dance. That training embedded in each pupil a certain knowledge - a knowledge of when to separate your hands in a sideways motion. This little nun put so much effort into her downswing that it was easy to anticipate the moment of impact.
Nun’s arm coming down!
I could hear our gym teacher saying these words inside my head as I separated my hands at precisely the correct moment. The result would be a ‘fresh air shot’. The leather strap would continue on its downward trajectory until it made contact with flesh. Not my flesh, of course. It was somewhere around the unprotected and hopelessly exposed right knee of the nun. The longer length habit may have offered her some protection. Who knows? I certainly wouldn’t ever want to know what lay beneath the dark one’s uniform. So as a result of me getting six of the strap, the real figure would have been nearer ten; the nun’s knee receiving the remainder.
“Let that be a lesson to you, young man!” she would say as she limped back to her desk in pain.
I am not sure if it was George Lucas or not that I saw peeking through the small window on the classroom door, but, if it was, I am pretty sure that he didn’t employ the ‘cricket move’ in any of his light sabre battles. Pity about that.
About the Author
Born in Saltcoats, Brian Morrison has a day job at the Hunterston Power Station. But in his other life he is well known as a caricaturist and comedy sketch writer. More recently, he has become a novelist and a writer of children's stories. His dark comedy, Blister, is available on Amazon.