Not Your Teacher's Pet - Chapter 2

Not Your Teacher's Pet - Chapter 2

Hmmmm, Sister Mary Joseph, what can I say about her? Simply that if I ever got close to a saint, she was probably the one.

To begin with, as I got old enough to understand the significance of it I was always fascinated by the fact that I was being taught by nuns from Ireland in southwest Texas. How did they get here - why did they get here? Why was this Texan whose grandfather had a fairly large ranch learn to sing Irish songs and dance the jigs and reels of Ireland from a young age? Lucky me! The luck was made even greater by the fact that they were all angels and dedicated teachers.

But I digress as we were talking about Sister Mary Joseph, were we not? She was the kindest, sweetest, most concerned teacher I have known. Yes, it is true, I made her cry. How could you do that when you thought so much of her, you ask? The basic answer is twofold. Stupidity and ego were the main ingredients. Yes this saintly nun would play ball with us, dance with us, cheer us on in all we did. She made every seventh grader she taught feel amazingly special and work hard and even behave. Even that jerk Wayne_____ changed his ways in her class and I did whatever she said - it was an epiphany.

However, I messed up big time. Now I was never really bad, just...well...err...I just wasn't what a teacher hoped she would get in one of her brightest students (this is not bragging, just repeating what almost every teacher I ever had told me). What I am about to tell you about was my worst offense at the time.

My friend and I figured that the day was too beautiful to spend in a classroom. We had both seen a news article about how the students at Rice University were taking advantage of the great weather to hang out on campus. Sounded great to us and we could take a 15 minute bus ride and join them. Yep, we were going to skip school. We were going to be the first we knew of ever to do it at this bastion of Catholic education. When someone was absent, Sister Mary Joseph would just ask them where they were and not even ask for a note from their parents. She was soooo trusting.

It was going great and we were having a cool time hanging out on the campus of this great University where we both planned to go to college...maybe. Then, around 1:30 PM I remembered that a reporter for one of the Houston papers was coming to practice that day to do interview with me because I was the only seventh grader to make the all city team that year. My chance for fame, I could not miss it. So, we figured we would just get back to school and go to the locker room just after the final bell and nobody would be the wiser. We could pull this off since this had not been a PE day and the coach would not know we had not been in school.

Seemed simple enough to us until I rounded the corner headed to the practice field and ran right over Sister Mary Joseph. When she recovered, she brushed herself off and asked where I had been that day. It was then I realized that my goose was cooked whether it was now or tomorrow. You see, I understood at that precise moment that I could never lie to Sister Mary Joseph. So I just blurted out that I had skipped school. She got this sad, forlorn look and a tear ran down her cheek. Of course that made me feel like a real jerk and I kept saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She looked at me and quietly said, "I know you are" and she just walked away.

We actually had a reunion of our eigth grade class from that great school and people came from all over the world and they all remembered me as the person who made that wonderful Sister Mary Joseph cry.