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The downstairs classrooms of my Catholic grade school were each painted a different color. All the walls were the same uneven stucco Jonathan Ericsson Jersey Authentic , a bump here or there calling out to me to run my hand over them. Sometimes in the rush to line up for morning prayers, an overzealous classmate would push me into the wall and a sharp stucco glob would jab me in the arm. The classrooms of the lower grades downstairs were each painted a primary color. The first grade classroom was the garish yellow of yield signs. The second grade room was a flat tomato red, and so on. Upstairs, where the upper grades were located, the walls were painted in soft pastels, the colors of babies rooms long forgotten.


I suppose the point was to stimulate your thoughts in the low grades, and calm you down when you reached adolescence. I was in fourth grade Valtteri Filppula Jersey Authentic , one year away from that prized, magical transformation everyone thought happened the minute you set foot in the upper floor classrooms. The kids that had been downstairs with us the year earlier were now admired from afar because they became part of the ?upper floor.? Last year, we played on the playground with them, sat together during mass, traded brown bag lunch items, gagged together over the snot-like tendencies of the cafeteria's turkey gravy. But now, now they were the mythical dwellers of the second floor. They seemed surrounded by a glowing aura of maturity. How I longed to be one of them.



This was my second school year at St. Agnes. I was not Catholic Darren Helm Jersey Authentic , nor was any of my family. But my mother, disgusted with the state of the public system after my former elementary was decorated with used maxi pads, wrote a borderline bad-check for the first year of tuition, and plopped me down into these halls dedicated to Mary, Mother of God. I had cried for two weeks straight upon arriving. My plaid uniform was strange and itchy. I was mesmerized by the single thread of neon green that ran through the otherwise somber grey plaid. All the others kids in this school seemed to start each day with a heartfelt Our Father and Apostle's Creed. I had no idea what they were talking about. Unaware of my two- grade higher reading level, the nun who was my teacher put me in the slow reader's corner. This nun, when reading Luke Glendening Jersey Authentic , pronounced the letter ?a? sound in a word like ?ah?, as in ?Jack had ah ball.


At my old school, it was pronounced with a long sound, like ?ay.? I burst into tears at my frustration over the two, and my mother was called into school for a meeting. She was called again when the nuns became unhappy about my slanted handwriting and the messy state of my cubbyhole desk. How in the world was I supposed to fit thick spelling, math, handwriting Henrik Zetterberg Jersey Authentic , and religion books into that little desk, anyway? My mother didn't show for that meeting, sending a note with me instead informing the nuns of the migraine that prevented her from attending. The nuns sort of gave up on me after that.


I was always last in line as the classes queued up for Wednesday and Friday mass. We were required to line up with partners. I was consistently paired up with the only other non-Catholic in the class. Her name was Ling and she was a refugee from Cambodia. The church had taken in her family. When she and her family first came, our school held a clothing drive because Ling's family had left Cambodia with just the clothes on their backs. Ling did not speak a word of English, and I was sure she was the only one beside me who had no idea who Art was and why he was with Our Father in Heaven.



During my first years at St. Agnes?, girls were required to cover their heads upon entering church. Some girls had lacy mantillas to wear, delicate head-doilies with bobby pins clipping it tight to their head. One girl had an antique mantilla that had been her grandmother's when she attended St. Agnes. The girl's name was Roberta Anthony Mantha Jersey Authentic , but everyone called her Robbie, the ultimate cool nickname. She was always picked to play Mary during the Christmas play. Her hair was long and cascaded over her shoulders under her head covering. My hair had been that long, until last year when my mother cut it off in her frustration at my lack of hair brushing diligence. My hair was now short, and my mother was always forgetting to give me back the one mantilla I had after she washed it. Sometimes when I forgot, the teacher would let me stay behind in the classroom while the others went to mass.


But my third grade teacher, appropriately named Mrs. Hunn, found it her personal duty to fill up the pews of St. Agnes with as many young minds as possible. Mrs. Hunn was small and dusty Jimmy Howard Jersey Authentic , but she was strong through the Lord, she liked to say. The two times I forgot my head covering, she made me use a Kleenex. I had to stand at the front of the class while she unfolded it and tried to make it stay on my head. It kept slipping off, so she doubled up scotch tape and stuck it to the Kleenex, then stuck it to my hair. Once she accidentally put her finger through the Kleenex and made a big hole. So, not only did I have a Kleenex on my head, but the Kleenex had a big hole Justin Abdelkader Jersey Authentic , which, to me, is not really covering my head, so what's the point?


The uniforms for St. Agnes were so thick and hard, I longed for the comfort of a burlap sack. In the hot summertime, these uniforms of boiled wool would stand on their own, regardless of having a body inside. Up until fifth grade Dylan Larkin Jersey Authentic , girls were required to wear a pinafore jumper skirt, which had a chest flap to cover up the idea of any boob potential. In fifth grade, the pinafore was shed and girls wore just a skirt and blouse. Boob potential became more a reality after fifth grade, so I never did understand the point of taking off the pinafore. The standard issue blue uniform blouses had a rounded collar and were consistently paper- thin. Repeated washings made them even more so, so by the end of the school year, girls were going around practically topless. But, in the name of modestandar. Wholesale Jerseys Free Shipping Wholesale Jerseys Free Shipping Cheap Jerseys Free Shipping Cheap Jerseys Free Shipping Cheap NFL Jerseys From China Wholesale Jerseys Wholesale Jerseys Wholesale Jerseys China Wholesale Jerseys China Wholesale NFL Jerseys