I am in 4th grade. Our teacher is sick today and we have a substitute, who happens to be the principal of the school. She's a nun, but she doesn't dress in a habit or any of the usual nun-like garb. She tends toward blue business dresses. I'm at St. ________ Catholic school and I am a star student. My conduct is always perfect. I get straight A's. I love school.
Now, the principal is called out of class and as she departs, she says, "Nobody should move from their seat and nobody should talk. Continue working on the math problems and I will return in a moment." She's gone. We work quietly.
Denise sits beside me. I'm too young to notice her as a girl, but she is my friend. She knots her face up in an uncharacteristic frown and points at problem 16, "How do we do this one?" she asks quietly.
The principal's warning comes to me, but at the same time, the school's teaching of helping one's neighbor also comes to me. I'm conflicted. This is the early 70's, the days of the guitar-playing nun with peace and love and forgiveness the general message being pushed to us all of the time. We even have a lesson on empathy in this school, for heaven's sake. "Its like walking in someone else's shoes," our teacher said. I understand this. I have empathy. I feel bad for those starving kids in India. When I get something cool for Christmas, I feel bad for those who have nothing because I can
feel how it would be to have nothing. I am a good Catholic. Guilt is good.
I decide to help Denise because Jesus said to love one's neighbor, which I knew didn't mean you had to kiss them, and geez, I'd sure not want to kiss a girl. I bend over and whisper the basic idea of how to do the problem and the frown turns into a look of understanding and she says, "Oh, I see," just as the principal reenters the room and sees me leaning toward Denise's desk.
"I said no talking while I was gone!" she reminds us (me) angrily. I try to explain how Denise needed help and I was just helping a neighbor like I was taught we should do...like I do every day in class because, after all, I'm smart and people ask for help all the time. "I don't want to listen to your excuses. You will spend your recess in the office and next time you will maybe listen to what your teacher tells you!"
And I spend my recess in the office, shamed and filled with an anger I never knew I posessed. I did what I was taught and I followed the teachings of Jesus, teachings that this nun was supposed to be upholding, but I was punished for it. I am in 4th grade, but I don't miss the parallel of how Jesus suffered for his beliefs as I was suffering for upholding those beliefs and I suddenly empathize much more about the struggle he had to deal with. At the same time, however, I take one step away from the church. If those who teach the laws of the church also uphold the laws of man without regard for the laws of the church, then there is a dichotomy that I can't reconcile.
At least not then. And certainly not now.
