Monday, August 2, 2010
Those who know me have heard about this, but I’ll recount it here. St. Joseph’s School, Bellmead, Texas, in the early 1960s. It was a rural area outside of Waco, and the school was so poor we didn’t even have school uniforms like all the other Catholic schools. We were so small we didn’t even have nuns! So the first couple of years I had teachers who I’m not sure had college degrees, and finally in fourth grade we had Sister Mary Alexia, who was well educated and a fine teacher.
I was thrown into a situation I couldn’t handle very well, starting out at that school. The little school was in the middle of a Polish farming community, and except for the few of us from the Air Force Base, the students were mostly farm kids with long Polish names. They’d known each other forever. And here I bounced in, joining in in second grade when friendships had been formed, with my worldly ways from having lived in Japan and my nice dresses and bows in my hair. And all those “A”s on my report card.
The other kids were envious, but I couldn’t have known that. I thought they were the ones with the upper hand. Unfortunately, our grades were announced to the entire class when report cards came out. Father Walsh would stand at the front of the class, read off each person’s grades, and make comments. So for me it was, “Barbara, straight “A”s, as usual.” I would have been proud and happy, but the other kids — at least a little group of snooty “mean girls” — accused me of cheating. The teacher did nothing to stop this. In fact, she said the only grade that mattered was Religion.
I can still feel the shame and the anger, and above all, that I was completely misunderstood.
