OSAWATOMIE, Kansas. Last spring, fifth-grader Timmy Markopolis ran for sixth-grade class president at St. Swithin’s School on a platform that included the usual grab-bag of politically popular goodies: no more fish sticks in the cafeteria and additional kick-balls for recess, but he added one hot-button plank to his platform that was, as the saying goes, “ripped from the headlines” of the newspapers his parents subscribe to.
“I say it’s time we de-fund the nuns!” he said to shouts and cheers in his final campaign speech in the school auditorium. “With those mite boxes we turn in at the end of Lent, they can afford high-powered quasi-military weapons like metal-edged rulers, while we’re stuck with the flimsy plastic kind because of so-called ‘safety’ regulations.”
Swept into office on the speculative promise that he could actually achieve such a far-reaching re-alignment of the balance of power in his school’s hallways, Markopolis found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to deliver on it Monday as students, parents and teachers–both nuns and lay instructors–gathered for “Back-to-School Night!” “Hey Timmy!” his skeptical classmate Rodney Cain shouted as they made their way up the stone steps. “I wanna see you take the rulers away from the nuns tonight–like you promised!”
The incoming president chalks the catcall up to sour grapes, as Cain was an also-ran in the presidential vote, finishing a distant third to Markopolis and Sue Ellen Minorkle, a “reform” candidate who called for additional protections for girls who volunteer to take names when teachers leave the classroom. “What was your campaign slogan again, Rodney?” Markopolis shoots back at him. “All pain and no gain with Cain?”
“Ha, ha, ha,” Cain replies sarcastically. “So funny I forgot to laugh. I’ll be laughing harder when I see what Sister Joe does to you.”
Markopolis puts up a brave front, but the enormity of his task is writ large on his face as he passes by the office of Sister Mary Joseph Arimathea, the principal of the school who is known as the “bad cop” of the Sisters of the Precious Blood order for her flagrant disregard of protections found in the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Convention.
“Just a minute there young man,” the nun calls out when she sees Markopolis.
“Yes,” the sixth-grader answers sheepishly.
“I need to talk to you–in private.”
The boy hesitates for a moment as he considers possible escape routes, but the nun grabs him by the bicep before he can flee and plunks him down unceremoniously in a chair before slamming her office door shut.
“I understand you think you could run this school better than me,” she says with a nasty edge in her voice.
“I never said that Sister, I just said we should have a fair chance.”
“I’ll have to look up your reading comprehension score on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills,” the nun replies with a mordant tone. “I don’t think you even understand the implications of what you write,” she continues as she thrusts one of the boy’s campaign fliers in front of his face.
“Timmy’s getting the Death Penalty.”
The boy gulps involuntarily, and seeing the effect that her sharp interrogation tactics have produced, the nun shifts to her “good cop” mode in the hope of persuading him to correct the error of his ways by gentler means.
“Did you make any money this summer mowing lawns?” she asks him sweetly.
“No, my mom says I’m not old enough.”
“Would you like to earn a nice shiny quarter?”
“Sure!”
“Okay, here’s a special one I found in a mite box. It’s yours if you bend over and pick it up.”
“Okay,” the boy says, and the nun places a commemorative quarter featuring Kansas state hero James Naismith, the inventor of the game of basketball, on one of the ancient oak boards that form the floor of the early twentieth-century school building. “Now, don’t strain your back, bend over slowly and easily.”
The boy complies and, as he’s in the ‘jack-knife’ position with his posterior pointing upwards, she brings down the hammer; a weapons-grade ping-pong paddle that is illegal for use in school discipline in thirty-four states, all of them, according to the nun, run by “namby-pamby good government types.”
“Ow!” the boy cries out in pain, then turns around to see the innocent-looking recreational equipment that the principal has wielded to punish him.
“I think you’re learned a valuable lesson from the Bible, young man,” she says sweetly as he rubs his rear end.
“What’s that?”
“My rod and my staff–they comfort you.”