random memory

the other day i was listening to a death cab for cutie song - which i'm sorry to say i can't remember the name of right now. but in it there is a line that says : "catholic school, vicious as golden rule. i had my knuckles bruised by a lady in black." i smiled to myself as i remembered my days in catholic school. i spent quite a few of my early elementary years in a couple different catholic schools. my experiences weren't really bad, except that i was painfully shy. like, sat by myself every day, shy. that really had nothing to do with catholic school though. it was just made worse by the fact that it was incredibly clique-ish. these kids had grown up together and didn't readily let outsiders in. this one particular school was in burlingame, ca. if you aren't familiar with this town, let me paint you a picture: set in the hills outside of san francisco it is a very affluent community. the houses were ALL amazing. no cookies cutter, suburban type homes here. more like old mansions. all of them. the house we lived in was no different, albeit a bit haunted, but that's a different post. there was lots of old money, established families, and, it seemed to me, lots of catholic families (which is the religion i grew up practicing). in this school there was a parish set right on the school grounds, complete with a priest and nuns. in seventh grade, well all through my schools years, i struggled terribly with math. of course i felt i was the only one, and in truth, i might have been. i was the only one who got to go with the nun during math for tutoring. i was taken into an empty classroom with this woman. she was actually very kind, when she wasn't tutoring me! she had to be in her eighties - at least. and she always - ALWAYS had coffee. as she tutored me she would go into these coughing fits and as a result little splats of coffee would appear on my paper. she would take her wrinkled, arthritic-ridden hand and wipe (smudge) them into my paper. my paper was illegible by the time we were done. when she wasn't coughing and spitting coffee on my paper, and sometimes me, she was talking. nothing out of the ordinary with this, except for the fact that if you drink non-stop coffee your breath is equal to that of a toilet in need of cleaning. bad. i tried to chew gum to combat her dragon breath, but we weren't allowed to chew gum. so this only worked once. then i tried putting my head down when she spoke to me. this didn't last either. she thought i was being rude and demanded that i look at her when she was speaking to me. i can't hold my breath for long periods of time. i found this out during my tutored days with the nun. blast! so throughout all of seventh and part of eighth grade, for that hour during each weekday, my life was made miserable by a woman of the cloth. i mean no disrespect. none at all. like i said, she was very nice and as far as i could tell, a very good nun. i'm just saying.