Rhubarb's interview.....First question

Rhubarb Whine recently tossed out an offer to interview any readers brave/foolhardy enough to risk it. As soon as I put up my impetuous hand I wanted to grab it back down. But, too late! She'd already spotted it. I need not have fretted however. No attempts were made to coax skeletons out of my closet or to make me reveal my deepest, darkest secrets. Shirley put a lot of thought into her questions and I was eager to jump right in and start answering them.

But the flesh is weak.

That was more than a week ago.

Procrastination is not my middle name for nothing!

I love to tell a story and she has given me not one, but several opportunities to do so.....


These are the questions:

1. Readers know you are of Irish heritage, and were educated by nuns. You have said 'their ghosts haunt you still'. Share with us a memory of that time that has had a strong impact on how you live your life today.


2. Tell me about one person with whom you’ve lost touch. If you hope for a reunion, how would you like that reunion to take place?


3. Your love of books and reading is apparent. What genres and authors are your ultimate favourites, and why? Fiction or non fiction?



4. If you were recuperating in a hospital and expected a long stay, who would you want in the bed next to you, excluding relatives?



5. Left field question, to finish on a lighter note: This question requires a little more work on your part. You have five minutes to go through your house and find one object that reveals a lot about you to people who know you, but would tell nothing about you to the rest of the world. Post a picture of that object.


See what I mean about opportunities to spin yarns? I think I hear the OC groaning! His life's mission is to get me to give him the condensed version. Of anything. You'd think, after almost forty years, he'd accept the fact that I'm just not genetically wired for verbal brevity. But he keeps hoping.






Aggie and Her Flock of Little Lambs.....


When I was in secondary school there was an evil plot between the nuns and our parents. It's stated object was to provide us with a quiet, distraction-free setting in which to do our homework. It's unstated effect was to ensure that we had no life! The evil plot was Evening Study. It was optional, but my parents, being conscientious souls, wanted to give me every advantage.

School got out at four. We hared home on our bicycles, had a bite to eat, changed out of our school uniforms and cycled back for Evening Study from five to seven. First, the inevitable prayer. Then, heads down to work. If you had a question you could go,[quietly!] to the supervising teacher's desk to ask for help. On the evening in question, Sister Mary Agnes was our jailer. Her chiseled, chalky face gazed out over our bent heads. If she suspected that you were the source of any stifled snorts or snickering, she squashed you with a glare.

I was seated in the middle of the room. Half way through the monotony I heard a chair scrape in the silence, as a girl somewhere behind me got up. Passing my desk, she flashed me a quick peek at something she was holding in her pocket. I perked up instantly! It looked like one of the monthly 64-pagers we loved to read. Stories of schoolgirls, like ourselves, getting into and out of all kinds of scrapes and adventures! They were about the size of Reader's Digest and half as thick. I patiently waited while Mary W conducted her business with Aggie. When she turned and started back to her desk, she grinned at me. Grinning back, I motioned for her to slip the 64-pager to me as she went by. I was looking forward to a little diversion.....

As soon as I had it in my hot little fist I knew I'd made a horrible mistake. It was a 64-pager alright, but not the kind I'd expected from my fleeting glimpse. Now that I had it, I heartily wished I didn't. It was a 64-pager version of what my mother called a "penny dreadful." To wit, a bodice ripper! Complete with sultry, scantily clad beauty in the arms of muscle bound Lothario on its cover. The setting seemed to be a dark and stormy night......

I was panic stricken! And Aggie was already sniffing the air, nostrils flaring, smelling fear....I was a goner! Another chair scraped the floor in the silence, as Aggie, a monument of a woman, stood. She knew she had me this time! [It wasn't the first time Aggie and I had tangled.] Never taking her eyes from my face, she came at me with slow, deliberate steps, habit swishing, beads clicking out my doom. I had shoved the offending material into the middle of a book I wasn't using, and was striving for a cool, nonchalant air, totally defeated by my blazing cheeks. At my desk, she stopped. And towered. Aggie was six feet tall if she was an inch! And held out her hand. I feigned innocence, and puzzlement. To no avail. Unwillingly I handed over the evidence, mumbling about how I'd had no idea it was THAT kind of 64 pager.

Aggie turned on her heel, clutching her prize, and returned to her desk. She looked like the cat that got the cream. She didn't like me and I didn't like her. She was exultant.I was miserable.

But you can't keep a good woman [or an idiot] down. Next evening I was full of the joys again. In the middle of evening study I was taking a wee [unscheduled] break. Having a little chat, whisper, whisper, giggle, giggle with the girl behind me. She said something funny and I threw my head back in silent laughter...................And, glancing at the little window in the upper half of the classroom door, met the quiet, reproachful gaze of The Mag. The foolish laugh froze in my throat. I wanted to die. Take me now Lord. I'm sorry for all my sins. Just take me now. Make it quick and save me from a slow, tortuous death by humiliation.

But of course He didn't listen to me. There was to be no quick and painless escape.

Sister Margaret L. was the headmistress. She was a gracious, scrupulously fair personage whom I greatly admired and whom I desperately wanted to have a good opinion of me....


I died a thousand mini deaths while she knocked softly on the door; while Aggie jumped officiously to attention; while The Mag walked silently to Aggie's desk and spoke a few words in her ear; while Aggie triumphantly called me to the front of the room,her voice high pitched and tremulous in victory; while The Mag quietly bade me follow her; while I walked behind her, down endless, echoing corridors, to her office; while she graciously motioned for me to sit. Which was a mercy, since my quaking knees were on the point of buckling......

The next fifteen minutes were the most miserable I had lived through yet in my fourteen years. I don't remember details. But, not one to assume she knew the whole story based on Aggie's reportage, The Mag asked me to recount the entire miserable tale, in my own words. It was not a complicated tale. The only complications came from how I felt about being the hapless twit caught in flagrante delicto. I sniveled and wept my way through the sorry tale. She murmured something about being disappointed in me; about having expected better from me; about how she didn't think my parents would approve of my reading such trashy stories etc., etc.

As an adult, I think she might have had a hard time trying to suppress the urge to laugh [if I'd been in her shoes I would have!] There might have been a touch of sadism in it all too. They enjoyed making us squirm! In religion class, when we touched on vocations, the Big One was being called to the religious life. Of course they hastened to assure us that marriage was also a noble calling. But not quite as noble, you got the unmistakable feeling, as nun-hood or priesthood. Because of all the messy, unmentionable physical goings on don't you know!

To my surprise,[and disappointment,] I did not melt into a grease spot on the seat of that chair in the Mag's office; neither did I expire from the weight of the humiliation. I was conscious, and over-heated, and acutely embarrassed for every excruciatingly minute of it.

And what did I learn?

I learned that if I was to survive in life, I should take care not to involve myself in any activities that I would not want The Mag to know about! Of course she has long since gone to her eternal reward, but the lesson lingers on. If something would make me ashamed, were anyone I loved or respected to find out about it, then it's probably something I shouldn't be doing in the first place. So I don't.




I still have four more questions to answer, but if you'd like to join in, just say so in the comment box, and I will dream up five questions just for you. You can then post answers on your blog, along with these rules and an invitation to interview anyone else who raises their hand! I'll try to make my questions as interesting for you as Rhubarb made mine for me!