Spectacles, Testicles, Wallet, and Watch

By that summer of 1982 I had been through one year of Saint Malachy’s and I knew the pressure that teachers placed on your shoulders. We had to learn by heart every word in every textbook, and we had to learn it well. There was little room for contemplating getting just the basics, just scraping by. The academic record was the cornerstone on which the glory from within stood mighty, just as the old master informed us that past August. We had to analyse and parse Latin text word perfectly, and verb declensions we had to know by heart or the imposing figure of Mr. Crummey would stand above you and chill your heart hard as backroom butcher’s meat. That deathly, silent stare. Half my class, Junior 1B, attended Mr. Crummey’s all too frequently ordered detentions, so strict was he.

Before one particular Irish class even started, as irritatingly late on Friday afternoons as any class could be, we were made to say the Hail Mary perfectly in our land’s mother tongue or the teacher would walk to the nearest desk and throw it across the room with one hand. He was still a young man; he could do it easily, one hand underneath the desk, sending it crashing into a far wall, and him all in a fit. Teachers in neighbouring classrooms failed to come investigate the noise, and I found that strange for they castigated us pupils for talking an inch above a whisper should we find ourselves alone in a classroom awaiting a teacher. Those times, breathing was deemed a damned distraction from the good work.

One Friday Francis Hughes struggled to bless himself in the mother tongue, and as he concentrated on the foreign words in his head he lost control of his hands. The master twitched with rage, more so than he did on any given Friday. He pointed to Francis Hughes and his teeth sparked.

“Boy, I’m leaving here for one minute, one fucking minute. By the fucking time I get back here you’d better be able to bless yerself like any good fucking Catholic your age.” He slammed his hands on the desk, locked his elbows, and he bawled. “How the fuck old are you?” he exclaimed, spit misting the air. “And you can’t fucking bless yourself?” Francis stood bolt upright, his shoulders back, his fingers playing with each other, wetly I was sure. He dared not move his gaze until the teacher slammed his open hands on the desk once again before storming out, screaming. “Fucking learn it boy, and learn it fast! This is fucking ridiculous…” He slammed the door behind him, puffing air under maps along the nearest wall. They came to rest again as all eyes rested on Francis.

For the next minute the class desperately whispered instructions to Francis, Shugsy as he was known.

“It’s your forehead, stomach, left shoulder, right shoulder! Got that?” Francis tried, failed, then tried again, then failed again.

“Shugsy! For fuck’s sake! Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch! Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch! You better get it fucking right or we’re all here till late on, you fucking wanker!” 

“Yeah, get it right Shugsy, or we’re all fucked. I’m not staying here just because some wanker can’t fucking bless his self, ya fuckwit.”

The teacher returned just too quickly for the instructions to be of any use, and he made us stand for an entire class, until Francis could bless himself while reciting a blessing in some foreign tongue.

“Are you fucking stupid, boy? Are you? Are you fucking stupid?” The master stormed around the room, the tails of his grey suit-jacket flailing behind him, a wreck of desks and the concomitant cacophony spreading. Still, no teacher came to investigate.

“I don’t care if it is a fucking Friday because we’ll stay here until you know how to bless yourself boy, you stupid fucking idiot!” He bawled an inch from Francis’s nose, wagging a stiffened finger in his scarlet face. “I’m going fucking nowhere boy, and if I’m not, you’re not, and neither are any of these fuckers. Got that?” He quieted. “Now, again. Bless your fucking self again, you fucking idiot.”

There never was room for the basics in Saint Malachy’s College, not when it came to blessing yourself, not when speaking Irish or French or declining past imperfect verbs in too many dead languages thought still too important to be ignored by Irish Catholic educators.