The Fedora Chronicles - Slice Of Life:: "PAY ATTENTION, OR ELSE!"

"PAY ATTENTION, OR ELSE!"

February 20th, 2006

Hello, readers. Today, I am going to share with all of you an event in my life that happened a long, long time ago, which was told to me by my mother. My mother got married when she was just 20 years old; she gave birth to me, her firstborn, at age 22. My father was a very jovial man; always whistling and, when he walked, you could hear the keys and change in his pocket jingling. My mother was the opposite; she was having a difficult time adjusting to motherhood. Neither one of them was quite sure what to do with me... in the beginning.

When I reached the age of five, naturally, I was sent off to kindergarten. I was seated at a desk in the back row of the classroom. The teacher, a Dominican nun (full habit and all) wrote the lessons on the blackboard, which was in the front of the classroom, behind her desk. After a couple of months went by, this nun (I do not remember her name) began calling on me for answers to questions. When I didn’t know the right answer, she’d come after me with a 12" long stiff wooden ruler, then she’d use it to beat me on the back for “not paying attention.” As a result, after many weeks of this abuse, my back was covered with ugly red welts. My parents didn’t question the nun’s methods; back in those days, discipline of that nature by nuns was common practice. Grandfather, however, having raised two children already, knew full well abuse when he saw it.

Grandfather Lawrence Leo Wagner, as I have stated in a previous story, was a big man, 6' 8" tall and 235 or so pounds. He was not a person one would want to deliberately aggravate; he had a terrible temper and was not swayed from showing it when he got angry. One Saturday morning, he came to our house (unannounced as usual) and was tinkering around with our car in the garage when my mother, father and myself came down for the breakfast he had made for - we could smell the bacon cooking all through the apartment.

That was when Grandfather saw the red welts on my back, through my light nightdress. He hit the ceiling; he shook his fist at both my mother and father, his voice went up 12 octaves. “WHAT IN THE H### IS THAT?” he screamed at them. “Where did she get those red marks?” He was looking at my mother; my father had fled the room. Dad knew better than to hang around when Grandfather got angry. My mother cowered behind the kitchen table. In a small voice she said, “she’s not paying attention in school, so she was disciplined.”

Grandfather, according to the way my mother related this story, turned bright red in anger. His blood pressure must have shot up to 200 psi. “WHAT? and you haven’t tried to find out WHY?” My mother’s small voice again. “Well... no.” Grandfather was so furious that, at first, he raised his hand at my mother; then he realized I was standing there watching what was going on. Grandfather clenched his teeth. He looked at my mother. “What time does she go to school?” “Eight-thirty, dad” my mother told him in the same small voice. Grandfather’s face was returning to a normal color. He said, in a controlled seething tone of voice, “Tomorrow, Muriel, I am going to take this child to school. I will take care of this once and for all. I will show you and Nick how to handle abusive teachers.”

My mother was terrified. She was convinced that Grandfather was going to do something awful, including murder the nun. She cried and tried to talk him out of his plan... to no avail. The next morning, Grandfather was sitting on the stoop of our building at 8:15 a.m., true to his promise. We walked to school together; I went into the classroom without him. He waited outside about fifteen minutes, to allow time for the nun to show up and class to begin.

When Grandfather was certain class had begun, he walked into the classroom. The nun was standing in the front of the room; everyone turned around to watch Grandfather, with one heavy foot in front of the other in deliberate heavy steps, march down the center aisle. He came face to face with the nun who, by this time, was rooted to the floor too afraid to move. Grandfather reached around and picked the nun up by her collar so she could look at him on the same eye level (the nun was only 5 feet tall). The room was dead silent. Grandfather stared at her for a full two minutes; nobody breathed. Then, very quietly, clearly controlling rage by the tone of his voice, said to her,:“If you ever touch my granddaughter again, I’m going to kill you.” He returned the nun to the floor, turned and walked back out the same way he walked in.

I never saw that nun ever again.

My parents and Grandfather took me to several doctors. It was determined that my eyes were weak and eyeglasses were required.

Experience is always the best teacher. But when the lesson of experience has not yet been learned by new parents, relying on parents who have gone before us is always a safe bet.

For more articles by V. Bee, visti her archives...
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