Chapter 28
Jeffee begins the New Jersey Inquisition
Now starts my tortured time in the Catholic school system. It's really weird that I even wound up in a Catholic school. My mom was a Catholic but my dad was not a Catholic and to this day I really don't know what he was. He just went along with my mom and sent me to Catholic school in Ramsey, New Jersey. My whole family would go to Catholic Church for mass every Sunday. My dad would go with us to mass but in all the years he was married to my mom he never did convert to the Catholic faith for whatever reason. My dad was friends with many high-ranking Catholic officials including a Bishop named Bishop Dougherty. I didn't even know any better. I don't know why but suddenly I find myself starting first grade at St. Paul's School in Ramsey, New Jersey.
I'm so old that back in those days they just had grade schools; they never had or heard of the concept of middle schools. St. Paul's was a first through eighth grade school. I remember starting first grade and had a very nice nun by the name of Sr. Marie I believe. She was very kind and nice. I guess the Catholic school system was trying to lull me into a false sense of tranquility.
Let me tell you not all nuns are nice. The meanest and rottenest ones seem to rise to the top. The principle of our grade school, St. Paul's, was this horrible mean, evil, sadistic nun by the name of Sister Alice Ellenita and I never forgot her. Even in the first grade I still remember and I don't know why, maybe because of my Asperger's condition but I dreaded and was scared to death of ever going to the principal's office. Of course there's no logical reason for it and at that age you wouldn’t know any better to be scared or not scared but for whatever reason because of my emotional makeup and mental health problems even then I was scared to death of Sister Alice and going to her office.
Again I'll speak of an event that I'll always remember to my dying day and it points out exactly how mean and evil Sister Alice was even if she didn't realize what she was doing was mean and evil. I can still remember as a fourth grader I realized that what she did to me was mean, spirit crushing and evil. Then and many years later what she did to me was rotten and evil and never should've been done to her young child. She should have been jailed for emotional child abuse.
At St. Paul's school the emphasis was on getting good grades and nothing wrong with that. I did get good grades and I can remember one time when our class was in the cafeteria and there were no teachers around, this student by the name of Joe Paglia got pissed at me because I kept getting such high test scores and of course the teacher would always tell Joe and the other students not doing well: "Why can't you get high scores on the test like Jeff does?"
Well that's a great way to get me killed isn't it?
Here's the way Saint Paul's School operated for the grading system that they had. The top students would get first honors (a card with gold on it saying first honors) or second honors (a card with silver on it saying second honors). First honors were gold, second honors were silver.
I had the added torture that my sister who was 21 months younger than me was only one grade behind me which meant when I was in second grade she was in first grade. Naturally my sister was a genius and she always would get about the highest grades in her class and always get first honors and I had to suffer because of that.
Most of the first, second, and third grade I was always near the top but I'd finished second, third, or fourth four in class ranking for my grade point average at the end of the year. And we had approximately 30 students in the class so I think being second, third, or fourth, was pretty damn good. Plus we had a lot of very smart students in that class so achieving a high class ranking was ready good considering there were no dummies in that class like you find in a lot of schools today.
In the fourth grade I had a really great chance to be number one. I can remember on the midterm exams I actually got like 4 100s or perfect scores and then maybe and 95 or 97 on the other tests but I definitely had the highest grades on the midterm final exams.
For whatever reason when they had the final exams around the end of May I didn't quite do as well on those final exams and that knocked my grades down. I still finished first but I can still remember at the end of every year Sister Alice would present honor certificates to all the deserving students at a large assembly with all of the classes sitting in the auditorium and some parents there also.
I am still haunted by the memory of this. It was one of the most dramatic events in my life and because of my Asperger's Syndrome I take emotional things like this very, very badly. When this happened, if you would have felt like me, you can’t even imagine how bad I felt and be thankful you can’t imagine how I felt.
I walked up to get my honors from Sister Alice at the end of the fourth grade. Sister Alice called my name first which meant I did finish with the highest average in the fourth grade. Sister Alice handed me a second honors certificate or the silver certificate and looked at me and said these disheartening, cruel, sadistic words: “Gee Jeff, I thought you were going to get first honors this year like your sister got”. What a horrible, mean sadistic, use of the English language by Sister Alice to me that day that hurt very, very deeply. Why the hell couldn't she just tell me Jeff, you did a great job you worked very hard, I'm proud of you for doing as well as you did in the fourth grade, rather than crushing me like a little grape under her foot in front of the whole school. She was mean and evil and it's very hard to forgive her for that but I will forgive her because I'm a good Christian.
There’s another evil associated with being a good student. It was true than and it's probably true today. Did you know that the other kids in your class especially the boys really hated when the teacher stands in front of the class and says Jeff got a 95 on this test I want how come the rest of you didn't do so well? Great you know I have to live with the students when you're not there teacher , way to go, I think I better take out more life insurance if you say many more things like that.
I can still remember one day when for whatever reason there was no teacher or principal round and all of my classmates were gathered together and this one kid; I believe his name was Joe Paglia, said to me: "Weber you better stop getting such high scores on those damn exams because you're embarrassing us." So your fellow students really don't appreciate the fact that you're doing well in school when they are not doing well in school so a word to the wise. Yeah I know I said this earlier but since I don't have 400 editors, book publishing people, marketing people etc. helping me get this book out I will worry about it
And the Catholic Church not only produces evil nuns; they also produce evil priests. At least back in those days I don't have any memories of me or anybody in my school being molested by a priest or nun. Unfortunately many kids today can't say that which is truly sad for the Catholic Church. At least back then we only had to worry about violence from the priests and not molesting.
I'll never forget the day I was out playing in the big paved parking lot behind the school. We could go out during lunchtime and this priest, Father Cook, actually punched a sixth grader right in the face. And it was no love tap; it was a solid punch. I do not know what the student did that made Father Cook angry but he punched the hell out of that student and he was a pretty big, strong, young priest. I'm sorry Father, I can't think of any circumstances or any verse in the Bible that said Jesus wanted a priest to punch sixth-graders; if you know of it please tell me what it is. I don't know what that verse is, I believe it was turn the other cheek and Jesus gave us a message of peace and not war.
Of course Father Cook later on quit the priesthood and got married. It couldn't happen soon enough for me. Evil, evil man; you look at his picture and he looks very sinister; like a picture of Nixon if you know what I mean. He's a very, very mean, ugly, violent, man and for whatever reason he came over to our school far too often. He was like the assistant parish priest and the rectory was across the street from our grade school. Father Cook, why the hell did you ever come over our school? Life would've been far better if I'd never met Father Cook and many other priests I've encountered in my life. I will talk about some of the other mean priests I met in high school soon.
And of course the Catholic schools have another good way of torturing you; they make you wear these horrible uniforms. The boys had to wear white shirts and this horrible green linen woven tie with SPS in orange on the front of the green tie to spell out St. Paul’s School.
We were inmates of St. Paul's school. Actually now that I think about it naming my grade school St. Paul's school was a very good name. If you remember your religious history, St. Paul wasn't always St. Paul. Remember in the bad old days he was a mean Roman legionnaire and he used to go out and kill and persecute Christians!
Then one day in His infinite wisdom, God supposedly knocked Paul off a horse and basically said; using the other name for Paul: He said "Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?" So I think our school was named after St. Paul while he was still a Roman legionnaire and terrorizing Christians because both the priests and nuns of my school spent most of their time mentally and physically torturing students so they would have fit right in with St. Paul's old occupation before he changed his ways.
I hated wearing that white shirt and tie. No little boy should be forced to wear a damned ugly tie. I don't think any adult should be forced to wear a tie. I hated it and formed a lifelong hatred of me ever dressing up in suits and ties. Of course, it would only get worse in Catholic high school. But also I want to tell you of another thing or two from grade school before I do want to tell you about four horrible years of Don Bosco High School, also in Ramsey, New Jersey.
I do have a lot of friends from grade school. Some girls and some boys I used to know would play games at school and I was friends with this girl named Eileen. Eileen and I always I played the days it was raining, when the weather was bad and we would stay in the classroom during lunch; she was a very nice girl. I was friends with a lot of other people in so I did have a lot of fun. Some good times at grade school.
And we had this horrible thing that I would call moxing. Living in New Jersey, the weather gets quite nasty in the winter and many times we had ice and snow in our parking lot right in front of the school. Boys would see you standing together with your legs close together so your feet were fairly close together.
They would sneak up either in front of you or behind you; then they would take their shoe and make a soccer-style sideways kick right at the bottom of your feet. They would sweep both of your feet sideways and since the ground was frozen with ice and snow; you would fall down like a sack of bricks. So on mornings when it was quite cold and the ground was frozen you had to be really careful to watch out for other boys trying to mox you and knock you down. Believe me I got knocked down my fair share of times. At one time I just remembered some grade schooler by the name Timmy Brown punched me in the face one day and I can't remember for what??
We used to play a game; it was take-a-away – the sixth-graders against the seventh- graders. We had this little tiny football and try and play take-a-way where you would have the football and would be running around and then all of your fellow sixth-graders would be running around so you throw the football to them while the seventh-graders were trying to intercept it and then they could play with it with their teammates. I was pretty good at that game and now I think most of the time my sixth-graders to beat the seventh graders in which we possess the ball longer than they did. That gave us a cut of excitement we had in grade school. Again were all running around in our little white shirts and ugly green ties without sneakers of course. I forget what kind of regular ugly shoes we wore but I guess he didn't know any better than.
I also remember one other game. We actually set up a little baseball field on part of the parking lot; we did have a huge parking lots at our school. One team would be at bat and the other team would be out in the field. And then whoever was batting would hit the tennis ball. And they would clench their fists and then they would hit the tennis ball. They might hit it to the infield and then you try and throw to first base and get them out. They could hit it into the outfield and then we would play it just like a regular baseball game. It was a lot of fun; I enjoyed playing baseball at my school. That’s all I can remember except I do remember I used to play first base a lot as I would catch many a tennis ball and put the other runner out. The nice thing is we didn't need any gloves or bats; all we needed was a tennis ball, so was very easy game to play. We really didn't care who won or lost. It was a fun little game that somebody thought up and all we needed was a tennis ball and held couple rocks or something to make bases so was pretty easy to play.
I remember the other game we used to play. We had a big maybe two-story high brick wall on the outside of our school so what students would do is they bring in this rubber ball and you bounce it off the brick wall and you have a whole crowd of what I would call outfielders who would try and get a catch the ball as it ricocheted off the brick wall. Then whoever caught the ball would go up to the front and be the one throwing it out the brick wall. We played that game many, many times in one form or another in was a great way to pass lunch hour when you're outside and the weather was nice.
Oh yes, Sister Alice had this little poster outside her door and it was so profound and so ridiculous that I never forgot it throughout my life. The poster showed a little boy and it contained the following words: "Little Johnny went to school, he never missed the Monday, little Johnny went to hell, for what he did on Monday." Isn't that profound? Isn't that warm and comforting for a little boy to see who's paranoid? You know a little boy who doesn't understand all this God in heaven and hell business at eight or nine years old and really doesn't quite understand everything about religion.
My school was definitely from the fire and brimstone type of religion, not from the lovey-dovey combined type of religion. I think you can see one reason why there all our so many fallen away Catholics. You got brainwashed at a very young age and as you got older and older you started seeing just how ridiculous and hypocritical many of the things they said and did were compared to what was written in the Bible..
It's a little hard to read Jesus saying: "Come to me all you little children" and when the little children did come Father Cook started to punch them. It didn't seem like a good idea to come unto the representative of God since God wasn't there, a priest by the name of Father Cook, was there. And naturally when you got to eight grade, you start getting indoctrinated by the wonderful grade school for Catholics that the only high school you should go to is a Catholic high school.
While I thought of something I should mention about grade school; I had many great teachers I like to talk about a few of them.
Like it said in first grade I had a wonderful nun the name of Sister Marie who was gentle, kind and I wish all nuns were like her. Again I remember in the second grade I had a Mrs. March; I don't remember much about her but she was nice too. And then in the fifth grade I met a wonderful teacher who had a lasting effect to this day on me and she is the one responsible for the fact that I am very good at English grammar. Her name was Mrs. Ryan and she was a wonderful, wonderful lady. She worked you hard in English because she knew how important that would be as a foundation in life. She liked me very much and I remember I wrote some story that she really liked and to this day I'm a little disappointed in myself about that.
Like I've been saying throughout this book, I am quite naïve and did not really understand the ways of the world and didn't really grasp a lot of things that maybe I should but I didn't. One time we had this assignment to write some sort of story about science. So of course I got some books on science and was reading them over and trying to figure out how to write my essay or my paper on science. It suddenly it dawned on me that one of the books I was reading had some excellent introductions in front of every chapter that talked about science.
So what I wound up doing was to plagiarize and write down those introductions word for word in my paper. Then I had my paper done and I turned it into Mrs. Ryan in the fifth grade. I thought that was the end of it, I did the assignment and I was done.
Mrs. Ryan liked my story so much she submitted it to some statewide competition for stories and next thing I know I was one of the top papers in science in the whole state of New Jersey. Of course then Mrs. Ryan is asking me where did I get all these wonderful ideas and that my paper was so well written and she went on and on and on. Of course I'm getting a little bit embarrassed because I now begin to get an idea that what I did wasn't exactly correct and proper. But honestly I didn't even realize at the time that I should've written my own paper and not copied some of the stuff from the book; I didn't know any better at the age of whatever I was nine or 10 or 11, I just didn't know any better.
But that did teach me an important lesson and after that I would never plagiarize anything I ever wrote again. I still remember the actual topic of it was: do you know that we live at the bottom of an ocean? What the book meant by that was that we lived at the bottom of an ocean of air, not an ocean of water.
Believe me, no one could diagram a sentence on a blackboard like she could. She taught me well and I've been good at grammar ever since and for that I want to thank her because she had a great positive influence on the rest of my life.
A working example of a interruption in my average day when I'm trying to do something like to dictate about my grade school experiences. Malia, my little granddaughter, wakes up screaming so I go in her room and get her.
Then I decide I better check on her diaper and it was a good thing I checked on it cause it was full of poo so I had to change her and clean her up. No sooner had I cleaned her up and my daughter Jinty calls, and she's tired, that she thought she was going to be off tomorrow but now she has to work at both of her jobs tomorrow and then she's tells me she keeps getting these bills from the emergency room and from the doctor in the emergency room who treated Malia when my wife brought her over to the hospital.
She was having a bad cold and a little bit of a fever. So now my wife has to figure out what the hell bills have been paid or whatever because the nasty people in the medical field care more about money than your health. The collection boys were writing nasty letters threatening me that a collection agency was after us if we don't pay the bills.
I will make sure my wife never brings Malia again to emergency room with something like a cold or a little fever. I told my wife go see the doctor next time and it costs a lot less. Cost about $400 even though we have Blue Cross insurance. Again I go back to the wonderful Newman Center graffiti I saw over 40 years ago: "Life is hard and then you die." Now back to the wonderful narrative of my miserable years in grade school.
And then in the eighth grade I had the probably the most incredible teacher that I ever expected to have in the Catholics grade school and her name was Mrs. Granelli. She actually treated us like almost adults. She would tell us these most think credible stories about incredible things that had been happened to her. Of course I forgot many of these life-and-death tales but here is one I still remember from eighth grade.
At some point Mrs. Granelli was in a car driving with some other people. Somehow or other they got behind some sort of a lumberyard type delivery truck and I don't know exactly what happened but somehow or other a steel pole from that lumber truck came through the windshield and literally pierced the passenger in the front seat. Stab the passenger like and night would stab you in medieval times when came a knight came charging at you on a horse. Believed that person died but Ms. Granelli was okay. I forget if she was the driver or another passenger but she was in the car when that guy got stabbed by that steel rod and that was the end of that guy. Believe me we did not hear tales like that from too many of the other teachers, pretty incredible.
Well I can't remember much else about grade school. I do know I got through it with high marks. As I still remember sometime in the eighth grade, somebody came in to pimp for the local Catholic high schools and I think we had three choices to choose from.
One thing I forgot to tell you: at least at grade school it was coed, so we had girls and boys. The Catholic Church decided they don't want you to grow up and have a normal social interaction with members of the opposite sex. So to make their miserable high schools even more miserable; they made them either all-boys high schools or all-girls high schools. Not right, evil concept. It screwed up my development which was bad enough to begin with and I'll hate them for that the rest of my life. I went there and didn't have interaction with members of the opposite sex. I think the three choices I had for Catholic high school was Don Bosco High School in Ramsey, New Jersey, Bergen Catholic, maybe 10-15 miles away and I think there was an actually a coed Catholic school called St. Luke's; it wasn't close either. So I wind up going to horrible Don Bosco and had a most miserable four years except for a few isolated good things that happened to me; overall a horrible experience.