STM: Sister Brenda & Sister Elvira

Indeed...aghast washes over many the faces...who read the title of this installment...for we are about to delve into the twisted, kooky world...of two helplessly, bizarre nuns...who graced many of our lives at Saint Thomas More...back in the 4th & 5th Grade...

Sister Brenda & Sister Elvira...hold the distinction of being the most feared nuns at Saint Thomas More...during the time of their glorious reign...back in the bustling early/mid 70's...When you ever-presently think back to, back then, our flat-out, overwhelming sentiments of us kooky kids were "Ohh...please, please, please God...just don't let me end up with either, Sister Brenda or Sister Elvira for homeroom. I will clean my room, I will eat my peas and I'll even play the big-ass tuba or the silly little flute , in the school band, gosh darnit, if you let me slide, this one, one time...Please God...I'm just telling you...I'm too young to die..."...Undoubtedly, this mantra echoed thru every school child's incredibly intense, almost sobbing, out-of-control, prayers, at mass every Sunday morning...

Let's see...Hmmmm...who should we go with first...Flip a coin...Pick your poison...Ohh hell, just get it over with...like ripping off that nasty scab on your knee...or getting vaccinated with that giant stinging needle...back then...

Oh yes, here we go...why not...Sister Brenda...Why not...indeed...

Sister Brenda...just showed up one unforgettable day, out of the clear blue, and sucked the life out of every single kid's life she came in contact with...She was in her 60's...wildly, witch-like, white hair...just ferociously ugly...and her screaming and ranting voice pierced your very trembling little soul...as she taught us back in the 4th Grade...when we were still more like meek, lost impressionable lambs...more than anything...else...

Her demeanor was almost demonic...not that she was THE DEVIL...but awfully damn, close...

And unfortunately, for my classmate, Danny Hahn, her wrath became totally fixated on him mostly, and his long, long blonde hair....We all had the BIG SCARY HAIRY HAIR...back then...but Danny's hair was almost as long & as pretty as a girl's hair...And for this...he would be punished extremely beyond his small, slim body could fathom and rather harrowingly way beyond his harmlessly, naiave comprehension...too...

Sister Brenda, would wretchedly grab ahold of Danny's golden locks and just unmercellesly pull it as hard as she could, flinging Danny, all about, like a rag doll, just leaving the kid, almost in a delerium of sorts...We did call Danny, affectionately, CHONGO, back then, because that was the name of a wild jungle kid...on The Banana Splits show...

See. the Banana Splits, was THE TOP KID's SHOW back then and our Chongo did like to duplicate/make the crazy "Monkey Noises" that the real Chongo made, making us laugh and laugh and laugh...Danny Hahn definitely was alot wilder, than your average kid...

But for our CHONGO, the laughter of hopping all about, making funny faces, joking all around, quickly disappeared...as Sister Brenda, put the hammer down, ruthlessly, slapping Danny's face, Smmmaaaackkk, grabbing his hair, and endlessly telling all the children,

Hahn, you look like a girl....Just look at this hair...It's a girls...When are you gonna get it cut...???

Brenda also absolutely had a genuine obsession with finding alot of kids with big, puffy-wuffy cheeks...and squeezing them ever so tightly and twisting them, mangling them, turning them red & blue...until it ungodly hurt...

Chalk up the extra chubby cheeks of big guys, Joe Just & Mike Mulligan, primarily, followed by the punk patrol...Slim Farrell & John Fitz. I know Slim & Fitz took quite a few slugs from Sister B...Hey, just about anyone could fall under her clenching claws...at any given moment...so for God's sake...watch out...!!!...

Then we get a little sordid and strange...Why...??? How should I throw this out? Another little shocker about the dubiously demented Sister Brenda...was she definitely sadistically enjoyed to get all the young boys lined up at the urinals, in the bathroom, in quick, little impromtu sessions....

There she was, in the boys bathroom, walking very slowly and almost the entire time, leering wickedly at us, hovering right up behind us, brushing her long nun's habit up against all of us...screaming at the top of her lungs...in unholy terror...

....GET THE POISON OUT, BOYS...!!!...GET THAT POISON OUT...!!!

Something tells me, dear, dear Sister Brenda had a slight bit of a psychological imbalance, Oh gosh...we really hated the idea of entering the bathroom with Sister Brenda baring down on us from behind...Damn...Talk about a total nightmare...hahaha....Sure, now we can laugh...

But hey...those were our times...and we had to, no doubt, roll with the punches...

Onto...the equally ominous and unaminously feared...Sister Elvira...She, herself, was almost a curmudgeonly midget of sorts...but don't let that fool you...she packed a wicked wallop...in her devilishly dynamic heart, that shifted from serene to psycho...in 2 seconds flat...

And if there was one distinct flaw I had to share about Elvira that sets her apart...(and believe me...there are many...dozens and dozens...and dozens..)...it would be her unwavering usage of Lysol Spray as a weapon of destruction...

Sister Elvira sprayed Lysol on everything...nothing was out of bounds...including you peanut and jelly sandwich...at lunch...Sure....she was the ultimate germaphobe's germaphobe...rendering all of us choking for dear life...as the nauseating mist...waffled about in a dense fog...across the entire classroom...all the time...

And I do know Fitz got half a can sprayed on his ass for farting...Oh well, Fitz, you shoulda seen that coming and not eaten so many beans...that day...my friend...

My brother Danny always gets a chuckle speaking of her sneak attacks with Lysol, while he had her, 5 years before, pouncing on unsuspeting kids, like a poor young fool, who dared to dawdle his loose toes, circling his warm, unsuspecting shoe...to and fro...

Booooom...!!!...Elvira, like a hyper kinetic cat, sharply descended upon him in a lightning, hellish fury...kicking the lad's shoe clearly across the floor...sending it spinning...then spraying an entire can...into the shoe...which took about 2 whole minutes...soaking, soaking and soaking, every conceivable germ out of that shoe's life...and then some...for sure...And who doesn't think back, now, scratching their head, saying...I wonder how "one shoe Willie" walked home that day...???

I, myself, can recall, one day, back then, being let go, to go to the bathroom, from my homeroom, down the hall...and slowly, gingerly wandering by...down the quiet corridor of an empty school hall...in a hush...past Elvira's classroom door, peering in at my dear school chums, caught in her elusive grip of terror...

There, I saw my good buddy, John Feely, a tall, curly-haired, amiable kid, if there ever was one...next to Slim & Fitz, almost frozen in a spooky, frightful stare...just following Elvira's erratic path...past him....as she mumbled past his desk...where he probably expected a wooden ruler across the hands or a cheap shot upside the head or maybe the the funky-fumigating Lysol...would make a special appearance...

I kid you not...I absolutely kid you not...And poor, poor, John Armata...just a rummy-dummy kid, just a fragile target, who endlessly struggled along...Imagine this tiny, Elvira, bashing away at this smiley, large, man-child, day in...and day out...I can still feel Armata's hopelessness now, wondering why he, such a happy soul, must endure such insanity...

We all, of course, no doubt, gained a tremendous respect for all our other teachers, who were not hell-bent on blending their ferociously chaotic, sinister spells...with their rabble-grabble mixture of pious, religious whaling & endless babbling of incoherent instructions...

I, myself, as I'm sure others, do too...feel so sorry for all those good, sweet nun's we knew, beautiful people...who incredibly shaped our young lives so much...in so many good ways...Those good & gracious nuns were amazing individuals whose loyalty to God & ability to emit God's love towards us, will always ring true...

But unfortunately, we instead, choose to focus on the two undeniably, dispicable, whackos, from some dark planet, in our solar system, or beyond...(...hell...???)

Surely...This perplexing paradox was not a pretty sight...to behold...our fate back then, but it did truly make us mighty, mighty tougher...for the realities of the real world...because as bad as your crummy job got, later on down the line, or how far your college grades slid...at least there was no turning back the clock...to you know what...and you know when...and you especially know, to you know who...

Sister Brenda...Sister Elvira...the twisted sisters...the tormenting twin terrors...the nasty, ghastly, one-of-a-kind nuns...Surely, our distinctive memories of them make us shyly shudder & shake...but inevitably, they make us laugh...a deep, deep, uproarious belly laugh......

Because the level of horrific absurdity...that reigned down on us...gave us a good measure of strength to overcome our fears...and leave us reminding each other...of our gallantry, to make it thru...to another day...in another time...in another splendid dimension...truly unique...to us Tommy More gang...back in the day...