by Marlena Elias
December 9, 2000

There is no way a kid who survived Catholic school can go through life without at least ONE story about a nun. I had many nuns while I was at Christ The King Grade School in South Bend, IN. Some good (Sr. Barbara), some not so good (Sr. Mary Margaret), some wonderful (Sr. Judith Ann) and some bad (Sr. Mary Margaret), but the meanest nun alive was Sister Suzanne.

By the time I was in 6th grade, it was decided that my class would be a part of the junior high and get an extra year with Sister Suzanne. Sister Suzanne's reputation preceded her BIG TIME. This woman could give you the death look much worse than any Mother EVER could. Her only joy in life was humiliating her students and trying to get everyone's anxiety level sky high. She was very good at both. The point of all this preamble is, our class was going to have English and Art with Sister Suzanne for 3, count 'em...3 years. We were the first and only class to have her for 3 miserable years in a row.

In addition to her charming personality, her physical appearance only enhanced her inner spitefulness. Her face was pasty white and unworldly smooth, and she had jowls that hung in perfect fleshy mounds. Even with her cat's-eye glasses she could shoot a death look at 200 yards. She wore an updated version of nun uniform; polyester skirts that were mid-calf with pattern double knit blouses, and of course her habit. She rarely smiled and on the unusual occasion that she did, she looked like she was in severe pain caused by constipation. Her delivery was staccato and accusatory; shrill really. Just looking at her caused anxiety; thinking about her 25 years after the fact still causes anxiety.

Since Sister Suzanne taught English and Art, we had her twice a day. There was no joy in Mudville; art class was agonizing and joyless. English class was, without a doubt, excruciatingly painful. The fear of having Sister call on you was by far worse than going to the Principal's office; no one had the guts to raise their hand in her class. The collective dread for being called on to go to the blackboard and diagram a sentence is still hanging over the grade school. I can still feel the anxiety and I'm ready to pass out.

On one particular day, Margaret Mahoney was yawning while Sister was droning on about verbs or adjectives or something, and as Sister walked by the tiny rubber bands attached to Margaret's braces shot out and hit Sister Suzanne right in the crotch region! Those of us who witnessed it held our breath right along with Margaret. Sister never missed a beat and kept talking! She must not have felt the rubber bands through her double knit polyester skirt! Margaret escaped what had to be sure death!

Anyone who has ever met me knows that I am possibly the world's worst speller. Ask anyone, especially my oldest sister Cathy. I will call her long-distance to get the spelling of a word because she has the mind of a steel trap, while I have the mind of a sieve.

Having said this, there was an essay contest for the Diocese of South Bend and all the Catholic school children were to participate. Sister Suzanne and the Pastor of our Parish, Father Ken, explained that the essay should be about a Priest or a Nun that has influenced our lives in a positive way. The teachers were not supposed to correct our papers; they were to be handed in as is. WELL, this would not do with Sister Suzanne; she wanted to read all of our papers and mark all the mistakes! When the day came to turn in the essays, she was completely beside herself because she couldn't touch those essays! She was hysterical with dread that the papers would leave her room and be filled with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors!!! Leave her room they did, and off to the Diocese to be entered into the big contest!

A month later, there were 4 students chosen from each school in South Bend, two girls and two boys. Before the announcement was made, Sister stood in front of the class and said, "The people who were chosen from this class do not deserve to win. The grammar and spelling are hideous and the sentences are all fragments. If I was judging this contest I would not have chosen these 4 people!" Then she announced the four finalists. I was one of the four! I nearly fainted! I couldn't believe I had been chosen! This was a major, huge honor and I got chosen! Even with my horrible spelling and terrible sentence structure, I was chosen for the contest! Man, was Sister Suzanne mad! Steam was coming out of her ears because not one of the four winners could spell or was remotely capable of constructing a complete sentence. Not only were we not her favorites, but no one wrote about HER. Not one student in our class wrote about this vicious creature and she was pissed. We paid dearly for that slight for the remainder of the year.

As it turned out one of the boys from my class won the city award for the diocese. I got this silver medal that I put on a chain and made sure to wear in the rest of the year. There was such satisfaction in knowing that even though she despised us, the four of us were able to write essays that caught the attention of some one more open minded. Whoever judged the contest was impressed with what we said, and not how many words were misspelled.

As it turned out, right after my class graduated, Sister Suzanne had a stroke and could no longer teach. After I found out she could no longer teach, I got on my knees and asked God why? Why did you wait for us to graduate to remove her from teaching? What was the point of putting us through hell for THREE YEARS?

God never gave me an answer. <EM>