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Blogs by David A. Schwinghammer
Warm-up activity - Freewriting 8/10/2009 9:02:31 AM
Freewriting is pretty much stream of consciousness writing. Think James Joyce and his ones-sentence novel, ULYSSES. Freewriting is a timed session, usually around five minutes. Don't stop writing for anything. Don't worry about grammar, punctuation, or spelling. If you get stuck, just write, "I can't think of anything." You'll soon get tired of that and be on your way again. Don't worry about changing topics in midstream. Just keep on writing.
In rural areas there is often more than one bus. When the kids at St. Joseph Elementary School were on the first bus they got to school early enough to attend daily mass. The first and second graders sat in the front pews. On one particular day I happened to be the only kid in the first pew. In those days the mass was in Latin and I had no idea what that priest was saying up there. I couldn’t read very well so the missal didn’t do me any good. There was absolutely nothing for me to do. I lost it. Unconsciously I started sliding up and down the arm rest at the top of the kneeler. Little did I know that Sister Norman my second grade teacher was sitting behind me, fuming. Who knows why she didn’t grab me, run me down the aisle, drag me outside and beat me to death before the end of the mass. Perhaps because the priest was a nice guy, and he may have stood up for me. Anyway, when mass was over, she gave me a tongue lashing to end all tongue lashings, smacking upside the head every few seconds. I tried to tell her I had no recollection of what I had done but she wouldn’t listen, being married to Christ and everything, a sure ticket to Heaven. She wasn’t about to let a heathen second grader get away with defiling the sacrament. I think I could have taken her if I hadn’t been afraid of being condemned to Hell. After all I was a farm kid with muscles from tossing around heavy hay bails while she spent her time building up scabs on her knees.
Nuns were notorious monsters in those days. They seem to revel in flunking people. My brother barely made it out of fourth grade. There was one nun we all dreaded especially. She had to be at least eighty and we all prayed she’d die before we got to the seventh grade. Her name was Sister Liliosa and she was from Nordeast Minneapolis with a passel of brothers and sisters who were also nuns and priests. For English class we would do something called 1600 Drill. Each kid had to answer a question, and if you missed you’d get a shot to the head that would make Muhammad Ali dizzy. We would all count ahead to where our questions would be and pray that it was an easy one. But there was always the chance that the kid ahead of you would miss his or hers and then you’d be in real Dutch. The old crone had the class divided into Smart, Average, and Dumb rows. God knows why, but I was one of the smart kids by the window. One day she asked me to open the window and I couldn’t get the sucker open because it was frozen shut. She came over, flexed a muscle and opened it with one hand. There went my rep with the girls I was just beginning to notice.
I joined the navy after high school, just about the time of the Ecumenical Council, where the church threw out the Latin Mass, did away with the communion rail and had the priest face the parishioners while saying the mass. That was enough of an excuse for me to stop going to church.
After the Navy I went to college where I was exposed to all kinds of heathen literature. I found out that Dionysus, the Greek God of the vine, was born of a virgin, died and rose from the dead. He was part god and part human. I also read that Mithra the son of God, Ahura Mazda, would judge the living and the dead at the end of the World. Could it be that Jesus was a composite of Mithra and Dionysus? I knew that December 25th was a pagan holiday. If that was true, why not fiddle around with the nature of Jesus?
I feel sorry for poor old Sister Norman, wherever she may be. In those days the ugly girls joined the convent. They’d never get a husband. All she had left was a chance to donate her life to Jesus, and now, chances are, it was all a charade.
Dave Schwinghammer's published novel, SOLDIER'S GAP, is available on Amazon.com at a discount.
