Outside Looking In
I was “standing on the outside looking in” when I was in fifth through eighth grades. The good news is that I didn’t fully realize it then. Luckily, now realizing it as an adult doesn’t bother me as much as it would have then, but it does give me some moments of reflection on those years.
The “outside looking in” situation during those years was because I became a non-Catholic student in the neighborhood parish’s parochial grade school, the first non-Catholic student in their history so we were told. This came about because in the Baby Boomer years, public schools varied a great deal in the quality of education they provided. It all depended on what kind of neighborhood you lived in. We lived in blue collar neighborhood with pockets that were downtrodden and struggling. Our district’s public school environment was rough-and-tumble and no place for a academically-minded white-bread girl! I must have been a fairly resilient youngster because I did not find the prospect of being the only non-Catholic student in a grade school to be intimidating. I was just a sweet, innocent 10-year-old and had no idea what total immersion into what was essentially a foreign culture would be like.
It was nerve-wracking at first, I must admit. We went to mass every morning as parochial school children, and in 1965 the mass was still said in Latin. I had no idea what language the priest was speaking or what we as the congregation were saying in response. I had no idea what the rituals were all about. We had an hour of Religion class each school day, which consisted of reciting the memorized answers to the assigned catechism questions or knowing the next line of a prayer as the child in the first seat recited the beginning sentence and it went on down the row. I remember the feeling of stark panic as I realized what the “game” was and I had no idea what the prayer was, let alone what came next! Fortunately, Sister Matthias was kind enough to glance at my stricken face and skip over me in those early days. It probably didn’t take me more than a week before I knew those darn prayers, though! They weren’t going to catch me red-faced twice!
I got along okay in that environment. In fact, it was the most stable, family-like atmosphere I had ever known. I loved being there. When my parents considered buying a different house in a better school district when I was nearing seventh grade, they thought I would like that. I could go to a junior high in a nicer neighborhood and leave the parochial grammar school behind. After looking at houses, an exercise that saddened me, they asked me what was wrong. I told them I didn’t want to move. I wanted to stay at the school where I was. For some reason, this came as a revelation to them. They quit looking for a new house, I graduated from grammar school the following year and went on to the high school in the same building.
It’s only now that I realize what a shirt-tail relative I was in that “family.” My parents were not members of the parish. I had no brothers and sisters to fill a classroom seat in several grades. We as a family were not involved in any of the parish activities, and my parents did not know any of the other families in the parish. I and my family were an unknown quantity, even after I had been a student in their grade school for four years. When I see Saint Southside's alumni greeting each other on Facebook after a period of losing touch, I now sense the familiarity they have with one another. They knew each other’s parents and siblings and attended each other’s family events from the time they were small.
I had friends while I was there, but I wasn’t part of the “family.” Interesting thing to realize now that I’m 56-years-old.