I notice I tell stories about my teens but for some reason have left a huge gap about high school. I tell plenty of stories of my lower middle class townie buddies I knew then but not many high school ones. I believe much of that had to do with Saint Ray’s being a fairly sedate school environment, except for the usual political machinations you’d see in this kind of prep/catholic school, where staff and students, try to rise up the social ladder. Other than that, the place was far more untroubled than the public schools I attended prior.
**
Saint Raphael Academy was an all boys school till 1975 when the diocese decided to let girls in, probably in keeping with the liberal times and Vatican II’s reformation.
What I had heard was that some of the Brothers and more than a few Nuns were against it because girls, women, were the sole cause of leading young Christian men astray from the True Faith with their slutty, Jezebel ways. Not all the ministry were onboard for the church’s progressive new stance.
My first few days at this new school in September of ‘79 were kind of surprising. The kids, who so few I knew, were a bit better dressed and slightly more monied than the pubic school kids I had known prior. But in general, they were affable and mostly approachable. I would come to learn the only real difference between the two schools, education wise, was that the private ones had better control of their classrooms. Any kids who were “problems” were given a bum’s rush through the door rather quickly and that’s how the private schools kept the peace. I saw ONE fight between two kids in my three years there. At public schools, I’d see one a month.
I had some fear of going to a new school. How hard would it be? Are there any cool kids to know? How do I deal with actual members of the DeLasallians when I hadn’t cracked open a Bible or attended Mass in years and couldn’t name the 10 Commandments to save my life? I wasn’t even sure of remembering the Hail Mary. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee….something something something.”
I became more hopeful by the end of August that year when I had to get the “uniform” needed to attend. It consisted of any kind of collared shirt, Levis’s corduroys and boat shoes. That’s it. That was what was popular for late 1979. The dress code was sort of written in reverse, no sneakers or jeans, otherwise everything else was fine.
I was fifth-teen then and that natural teen exuberance, the anticipation, the excitement that this school could be fun was growing in me. Plus meeting newer kids my age who weren’t the usual little criminals I knew around here had a bit of “good” suspense to it. Who were they? What were they like?
My first class, was an Algebra one and I was sitting a few rows down when this girl, Terri, comes in to which the boys flocked around. She was chatting them up excitedly and then turned to go to her seat in the same row as I. When I first saw her face, I thought she was rather pretty. A sort of a Susan Dey kind of girl, a natural hippy look to her.
As she approached my seat, I then noticed her Levi’s Green corduroy pants, which formed a tight, anatomically correct, very easilyi seen camel toe.
I just stared with my 15 year old eyes. I had never seen any girl with that before in real life. All the girls I had known in jr high school never dressed like that. They all wore generic jeans with hopes of affording the new Jordache designer ones one day, but were too poor as of yet. As Terri approached, I kept staring till she was all of two feet from me when I looked up at her face and she gave me a slight, wry smile then sat down. She knew where I was looking and it didn’t faze her a bit. In fact, she seemed somewhat satisfied that I noticed and was staring.
I had a second thought: Catholic school wasn’t as uptight and strict as I thought it may be if girls like Terri walked around like this.
A few classes later, Mr Girard’s World history, had the same kids and Terri had come in, flanked by the boys and she too sat down with the rest of us. About ten minutes into the class, I then met for the first time, Sister Bernadette Piche.
**
Sister Bernadette was one of those nuns who adopted the newer, liberallized clothing style for nuns, which was to ditch the old black and white habit for conservative casual business wear. It was all greys, pastel blues and white shirts, dresses and the like, totally sexless looking but I suppose if your a nun, that’s the look you want.
The Sister’s liberal tendencies stopped there, at clothing. She did however keep that authoritarian stance. She didn’t terrorize her students but had her own way of maintaining order. If she came across a group of rambunctious boys, she’d slowly walk up, stand and stare with a small smile upon her face until everyone read her message which was, “Cut the shit,” in her own menacing/passive way. She had a near Mother Mary air about her, possibly claiming to being closer to God than any of us were it seemed. It was a calm, unaffected look on her face that also telegraphed that authority that she was God’s Right Hand. I had never been to parochial school before but I managed to read this easily. It confirmed the stereotype I had seen on TV. Some stereotypes contain a kernel of truth.
So in comes Sister Bernadette to Girard’s history class, she stops, looks around, smiles and calmly says, “Terri Norenson….a word with you please.”
Terri gets up with that perfect line of her tight ass showing through those corduroys to follow the Sister out.
We don’t see Terri for the rest of the day. Sister sent her home due to those pants.
The following days Terri had returned but in knee length skirts and the tightest white shirt/sweater combo she had. As the days progressed, the hemline on other skirts she had kept creeping higher and higher and we’d see more undone buttons on the shirt. By the end of this change, all she needed were pigtails and carry a giant lollipop to complete this Lolita Catholic Slut Girl look.
I now get it. At 15, she was wanting to be loved by all the boys around her, to be seen as pretty, to be validated, to be popular and rise in the ranks. If a girl wanted quick attention from teen boys, there’s an easy way to get it. Terri unfortunately chose skank fashion in a school patrolled by the hem measuring Bernadette.
A few days later in home room, I mention I hadn’t seen Terri at all. I was told that she had been kicked out for “causing a disturbance.” What disturbance I ask? What had she done? She punch someone out? Dealt drugs from her locker? I was never a catholic school kid and what it took to get you kicked out of a public school...were real felonies, real crimes, real reasons why the police would be called in.
Scott P. who sat next to me laughingly says, “She got kicked out for causing a disturbance in every guy’s pants!”
Too bad she was gone...she was great entertainment for us boys.
The other thing about Saint Rays was that it drew on kids from far richer backgrounds. My experience with public schools was that they drew on every one from every background, so you see this everyday and learn to accept it. In order to get along, you have to tolerate all sorts of people.
Saints, on the other hand, had some kids whose Dads were hundred-thousand-airs. Perhaps there was one or two millionaire families in there but I wasn’t sure. The rest of us were lowly middle class schleps.
One girl I remember, came from a family that owned an home heating oil delivery business. To her great luck, she was born pretty, tall and blonde as well. Talk about winning the lottery w/o having to do anything at all.
**
In our homeroom one day, we boys see a brand new 1982 IROC Camaro pull in. It was the latest edition in midnight blue with a pearl flip-flop top coating that made it iridescent like the inside of a sea shell.
It parks, and we see home heating oil girl get out of it, carrying her D&D cup of coffee and coming into the building. We boys immediately figure she got Dad’s car this morning. She comes into our home room, goes to her little clique of other born pretty/rich girls and excitedly says:
“Come see what Daddy got for my birthday!”
The girls come to our window and ooh and ahh at the car. We boys just stood there stunned, dumbfounded and look at one another in disbelief.
I thought, “She got a brand new sports car for her birthday?!!”
Home heating oil girl goes on about how she put in a little thingy that spurts out a tiny puff of White Diamonds perfume inside the every hour. She also mentions that she put a small suitcase in it with two other changes of clothing, “Just in case.” To top it off she says she put her teddy bear, “Angel” in the backseat, buckled in as well.
This, is what she did with an IROC Camaro, turned it into a mobile version of her bedroom.
We boys later say we’d take that very same car, and slam on the accelerator on that straightaway east of the school on Walcott St to see if we could get it burn out for 50 yards straight.
That school was the first time my seeing how the other half lived...or inherited. Before Saints, I had never known of a family that took vacations to Europe. Or girls with real diamond earings. One kid boasted of living the entire summer at a beach home on the Narragansett shore. It was then I first was introduced to people, kids who manage to escape the barbs of life. All the ones I had known up to that point had some sort of road rash from life, either from homes where finances were tight, awful parent(s) or say just a day to day grungy life of living on the shittier streets of Pawtucket, where parents advanced as far as they could, to a factory job. Some of these Saint Rays kids I knew, had parents that could shelter them that well. I couldn’t parse that at the time. How the hell could you duck life’s barbed wire and incoming missiles? I still didn’t fully understand how a thick wall of money could armor you, for years, against that. I didn’t know then yet what that really, truly meant. I do now. Money can be one hell of a tool if you have gobs of it.
**
Before school shootings became the thing to do, before they installed metal detectors at school doorways, I can tell you how many guns were inside Saint Raphael Academy in 1982.
The answer I am going tell you was three.
In one locker there was an Army Colt .45. In another a Mossberg 12 gauge pump action shotgun, the last locker had boring S&W .38 special. And I will not name names.
Why were they there? It wasn’t because these three wanted revenge for a lifetime of bullying or some sick hope to go out with a bang. It was a competition, a sort of show and tell between some of the kids to see if they could smuggle in firearms and keep them in their lockers for at least a week w/o being caught. The joke of it is? All the kids knew they were there and not one school official was told. No one was ratted out because we all knew they weren’t going to be used. It was for “fun.”
Again, nobody wanted to exact revenge in the worst way. It was all ballsy attempt to to do something w/o the adults ever finding out. Though I do wonder how that one managed to sneak in a 40 inch long birding shotgun with a muzzle that meant business when you saw it.
In time, those weapons were quietly snuck out and back home.
I’m loathe to mention real names here when I tell not so kind stories, though if I hate your guts enough I will. Also, if I was present with other witnesses when I saw this or that happen, well...I’ll divulge.
Brother James Dries was a hot headed math/chemistry teacher who joined St Rays in my senior year. He seemed out of place, a 1950’s sort of abusive, tyrannical religious type amongst the far more laid back Brothers who were at Saints. Dries loved to yell, strut his dominance in the classroom and I saw him once, fling his briefcase at a kid outside the building. Why he did that I have no idea.
In May of our senior year, we all had our credits to graduate no matter what happened, we had satisfied the state’s requirements, so we generally fucked off when it came to classwork.
Mike and I had Dries for chem II one super hot late May afternoon and everyone in the class was half asleep and languid with the heat. No one was motivated to do anything nor listening to Dries go over some chem equations from the book.
Behind me I hear Dries say, “Mike, go to the board and do Question 7…”
A few seconds pass when I hear WHAM! It was the sound of metal stool being slammed onto the granite top of a table. It then had bounced its way to the corner of the room, totally shattering the quiet of the room.
“GET UP THERE WHEN I TELL YOU TOO!” bellows Dries.
I had jumped in my seat from that noise and turned around to see what it was. I then see Mike, rolling his eyes as hard as he could, get up and go to the board to do the equation.
I watched as Dries walks back to the front of the classroom and remember what my brother had once said about guys like him, “Short person behavior!” Meaning you have little, short guys who become tough when anointed with some authority. What’s typical, those kinds of people wield the power like a baseball bat and never realize when NOT to use it.
A few years after graduation, and the fact I had to pass by Saints all the time to get to 95S, I’d occasionally see old teachers walking between the two buildings. One day, there’s Dries, flinging his briefcase at a kid on the sidewalk. I thought of pulling over, picking up that case and flinging it back at him. But the thought of standing in front of a judge explaining why I assaulted a man of the cloth made me think twice.