Telling stories about your horrible, geeky childhood has gained popularity online and elsewhere (see Mortified, Pathetic Geek Stories). I was (am) a huge nerd so I have plenty of stories, some crushing, some funny now that it’s over, mostly pathetic. But I thought it would be easier to start with someone else’s story.
I went to 12 years of Catholic school so I’m good at making fun of Catholicism. I’m trying to find my Buddha nature and stop heckling other’s central belief systems and reasons for living but its hard when there is so much material to work with. I’m waiting for you, enlightenment.
At my suburban, Catholic grade school, it was pretty much the same core group of kids from
K through 8. I always felt like I was at a disadvantage because I transferred in 1st grade. I think some major bonding happened in kindergarten. By 8th grade there were 35 of us, weaned down from 50 or so. We wore ugly uniforms, attended church, had religion class and prayer daily, a couple nuns and priests worked as teachers. No one was particularly enthused by religion. I remember a priest and nun visiting our class around 5th grade asking if anyone thought about joining the ministry and looking very sad when no one raised their hand. Uh, we are just hitting puberty and you are asking us if we would like to live without sex? Not going to happen.
There was one boy in our class, Tim, that was Lutheran. I’m not quite sure why he didn’t attend the Lutheran school down the street but maybe our new basketball net or library with 2 shelves of designated 6th grade and over reading material swayed his parents. Catholicism and Lutheranism are somewhat similar except for differences in sacraments like Eucharist (eat the Jesus communion wafer), Reconciliation (tell the priest you are bad. so very bad) and other core beliefs I’m not going to research just for a blog entry. Being forced to attend mass way too often, communion was the highlight of our sad little mornings. You got to get up, stretch while standing in line and you got fed! Tim had to sit in the pew and look like he was praying to his dirty Lutheran God while we got our Jesus filled snack on.
Kids glom onto any difference, no matter how small and exploit it. So Tim’s life was not fun. We all knew he was Lutheran, maybe it was announced via PA the first day of school because I don’t remember talking to him to gather this knowledge. This was Different and therefore Bad maybe because no one Explained It To Us.
For some reason Lutheran turned into Jewish. Maybe because Judaism was the thing to make fun of as a kid? Those little bastards didn’t realize how popular Jews would be later in life. “That’s so Jewish” was a popular insult even before Tim’s conversion was declared.
Tim was forced into Judaism, mostly by the boys but the girls took hold too. Recess would be punctuated by screams of “I’m not Jewish!” in response to whispers and glares of ugly skirts, knee socks and ponytails. Teachers stared at the little neo-Nazis and told Tim to stop yelling. Some kids tried to build a small concentration camp behind the St. Michael statue.
Of course his Jewish-ness needed characteristics to further make fun of so again, the boys brought it to the class’s attention that Tim was uncircumcised. We were too young to know that in every bad movie and sitcom for the rest of our lives, the Jewish family would be forced to deal with a bris, making it the one identifiable trait of Judaism. Not wanting to be tricked again like with the St. Michael is the patron saint of barbed wire thing, the half of the class that did not use a urinal wanted to know how this information was obtained. The boys, seeing the flaw in explaining examining another guy’s junk in the bathroom, came up with a solid explanation. Tim always used the stall AND was not pooping. Obviously, hiding his foreskin shame and perusing Jews for Jesus literature.
So that is how Tim lived out his grade school days, Jewish, uncircumcised, fearing trough urinals. He might as well have been a leper in the Bible stories we memorized and recited year after year.
I saw Tim a few years ago, wearing a big gold cross pendant.