Chapter 12

Skip Chapter Six

On the day I joined the St. Rita Cross Country team in the fall of 1972, I was not exactly in peak physical condition. If I had been, “husky” pants would not have been such an integral part of my wardrobe. I said “joined” instead of “tried out for,” because there were no tryouts for the cross country team. If you showed up for practice and completed the assigned workouts – no matter how long they took you (and they always took me longer than everybody else) – you were on the team.

Joining the team was easy. Staying on it was hard. The workouts were grueling. I was ridiculed for being so slow. And I was so wiped out by the practices that I once dozed off at the kitchen table while eating my supper.

It was no surprise that my Pillsbury-Doughboy™-like, adolescent physique had failed to earn me a nickname like “Muscles” or “Jimmy LaLanne.” And it was also no surprise when, at our first practice, the nickname “Pudge” was unceremoniously bestowed upon me by the jag-off who’d eventually become one of my best friends – Raymond J. Shaughnessy. Fortunately, after a few weeks of practice I’d shed enough weight to also shed that embarassing moniker.

I believed that once I’d logged enough miles I’d become fast enough to stay with the main pack of runners during workouts and races. But I was wrong. Although I put in the same number of miles as everybody else, I lacked the mental toughness and the ability to deal with pain that are necessary to be able to run long distances competitively. From day one I’d developed the habit of falling off the pace of the pack at the outset of every practice and race. And once you lose physical contact with a group of runners, you’re bound to lose mental contact with them, too. Once you’ve done that, you’re toast, and chances are you’ll never be able to catch back up to the pack. At least I never could.

So my teammates were greyhounds and I was a dachshund. At least I wasn’t the slowest guy on the team – that is, until the slowest guy on the team quit. And sure it sucked to be the last Rita runner in at every practice and meet, but what made it worthwhile was that I was still part of a team made up of crazy, hilarious knuckleheads like Neumann and Wolak; Dewinski and Hoeflinger; Cortez and Weston; Ripoli, North and  Jankowski; Doyle and Pirih; Jaskolski and Ternes; Bricker and Lein; Shaughnessy and Nash; Moore and Wojtowicz; and Rogalla and Lodding.

Then one morning, as usual, I was the last one to arrive for homeroom. As I slid into my seat in the last row I wondered why in the world a pack of snarling wolves – i.e., a roomful of 15-year-old boys – was staring me down. And through the early-morning fog my thoughts drifted back 24 hours to when …

… I’d been talking to Gary Piwowarczyk and Dennis Macejak as morning announcements blared over the P.A. Talking was not allowed during announcements, but being a Klenn I was unable to resist. (FYI – Klenns can go on and on and on about how close-mouthed they are, but don’t you believe ‘em. Because in addition to being great talkers, the Klenns are also great liars.)

Just as the announcements were ending, without even looking up from his desk, Mr. Eckert said: “Klenn. Macejak. Piwowarczyk. Write out chapter six for tomorrow.” Three fish caught on a single hook. Unbelievable.

When cross country practice ended that evening Mr. Eckert called me over and asked: “So whattayagot for homework tonight?”

“Uh, some Spanish and Biology … an Algebra quiz to study for… and I gotta write out chapter six,” I said.

“Sounds like you got plenty to do, so just forget about writing out chapter six,” said Coach Eckert. As he strode off to join the other coaches I trotted off to the locker room, grinning like an idiot – which in retrospect was apropos. I took the bus home, ate supper, did my homework, watched some tube, and hit the sack without telling a soul what had happened.

The following morning (back where this story began) I was struck by a thunderbolt of realization. I was the focus of the class’s attention because before I’d arrived, they all must have seen Macejak and Piwowarczyk turn in their hand-written chapter sixes. So if and when I failed to follow suit, my punishment was certain to be ratcheted up exponentially, providing some outstanding early morning entertainment. I stared at the floor as the wolves licked their chops.

I wish I could tell you that I sprang into action and tore some blank pages from my notebook and marched them up to the front of the class. But I did no such thing. I just froze, ashamed by the realization that my tardiness, combined with my absent-mindedness, had painted Mr. Eckert into a corner.

However, I had utterly underestimated my teacher/coach’s resourcefulness, who with a sadistic grin announced: “Instead of having him write out chapter six, after cross country practice yesterday I had Mr. Klenn run sprints till he hurled.”

Holy St. Jude! (For all you non-Catholics: St. Jude is the patron saint of hopeless causes.) As the gallows’ trap door sprang open, Mr. Eckert, with a simple bit of fiction, cut the noose I’d tied around my own neck. The wolves nodded their approval in unison, having found a fictitious barf-fest incalculably more satisfying than an ordinary case of writer’s cramp.

Mr. Eckert never mentioned the incident to me, and I never mentioned it to anyone. And for a long time I’d regretted the fact that I’d never thanked him for bailing me out that day. Then at some point I figured that maybe I had thanked him simply by keeping my yap shut. Ya know, until now.

Chapter 11

That’s Ancient History

St. Rita School for Wayward Boys. My buddy Chris tells people that’s where I went to high school ... after spending eight years at St. Clare de Maltese Falcon. The actual names of my alma maters are St. Rita of Cascia High School and St. Clare de Montefalco Grammar School, but I prefer Chris’s versions.

Freshman year at St. Rita I had the good fortune/dumb luck to be assigned to homeroom section 1F – Ancient History, taught by Mr. Michael Eckert. While the topic of Ancient History held no particular sway with me, the man who taught it certainly did.

I didn’t especially look up to Mr. Eckert as a teacher. I especially looked up to Mr. Eckert as a badass. Around Gage Park – the neighborhood I grew up in on Chicago’s Southwest Side – some families produced badasses in pairs. Like my cousins Joey and Tony Geraci; the Cavelle brothers, Phillip and Jimmy; the Fielding Boys, Chris and Brian; and John and Tommy Sullivan. I myself was the furthest thing from a badass you could ever imagine, but I knew one when I saw one. And Mr. Eckert definitely was one. Maybe that’s why he never had to rely on shouting or swats to maintain discipline like some other teachers did. (“Swats” – the corporal punishment of choice during my years at St. Rita – consisted of being swatted on the ass with something akin to a fraternity paddle.) One teacher told us that he’d drilled holes in his paddle to decrease its wind resistance, thereby increasing the speed and force of his strikes. However, since his epic comb-over must have increased his wind resistance, perhaps in the end those competing forces cancelled each other out.

The first words uttered by Mr. Eckert every morning were not “Good morning, class.” They were “Rogalla, go get me a cup a’ coffee.” Bill Rogalla sat in the desk nearest our classroom door, so he was the obvious designee for fetching Mr. Eckert’s morning coffee from the teacher’s lounge. On his way out, Rogalla would grab a hall pass from Mr. Eckert to avoid being stopped by a hall monitor whilst on his mission of caffeination. Hall monitors were upperclassmen who’d volunteered to spend their study hall periods at desks in the hallways, making sure that all students roaming the halls during class time had permission from their teachers to be roaming the halls during class time. We never thought of hall monitors as narcs or snitches. We thought of hall monitors as brown-nosers and suck-ups.

One morning Mr. Eckert got to class a few minutes late, looking a little rough. He told us to review the current chapter of our textbooks, adding in a menacing hush that if he heard so much as a peep out of anybody, everybody would be very sorry. Then he laid his head down on his desk and was perfectly still. Maybe he had a cold or the flu. Maybe he was hung over. Maybe he just hadn’t slept well.

The room was dead quiet – for about five minutes – until a couple of guys started talking in whispers. Then a few more. Then a few more. And before we knew it the room was buzzing like a pit at the Chicago Board of Trade. Suddenly, Mr. Eckert sat bolt upright and the room went silent. “All right!” he hissed. “Write out the chapter for tomorrow. If I hear another sound, the whole class’ll get Saturday jug [“Saturday jug” was a 4-hour detention held on, you guessed it, Saturdays].” The room returned to silent mode for the remainder of the period.

On one occasion he captivated the class with tales of the unconventional tactics and weaponry – including the use of elephants – employed by Hannibal Barca, the brilliant Carthaginian general. “Anybody know what a sling is?” asked Mr. Eckert. “When Hannibal saw mercenaries from the Balearic Islands hunting birds with slings, he said ‘Them’s my boys!’ and recruited them for his army.” [It’s quite possible Mr. Eckert took poetic license with Hannibal’s quote to tailor it for his audience.] And he proceeded to march up and down the classroom aisles acting out the difficulties inherent in trying to defend oneself against a 15-foot-long spear.

Then one day, just as class was ending, Mr. Eckert informed us that the St. Rita Cross Country team tryouts were coming up. And that he was the coach. And that we were all invited. After class, Dave Wojtowicz – my best friend since the second grade – asked me if I wanted to go to cross country tryouts with him. I wondered if going out for cross country would preclude me from playing baseball, basketball and football for St. Rita. As it turned out, unexceptional showings at the respective tryouts were what precluded me from playing baseball, basketball and football for St. Rita.

Dave was unable to answer any of the pressing questions I had:

“Was St. Rita’s cross country team any good?

What kind of time commitment would be required?

Where would practices be held?

What kind of coach would Mr. Eckert be?

Did we know anybody else who was going out for the team?”

And without getting an answer to a single one of my questions, I told Dave of course I’d go out for cross country with him. I just had one last question:

“What the hell is cross country?”

If Dave had provided me with an accurate definition of cross country, such as: “the running of ridiculously long distances through the woods in shitty weather,” I’m pretty sure I would have taken a pass. But off we went, racing towards our futures on adjacent paths that would soon diverge.

Of course being a Klenn, once I’d made up my mind, I was all in, confident in the wisdom of my decision, eager to prove myself, and excited about the upcoming challenge.

But all that stuff went right out the window as soon as we ran our first workout.

Chapter 10 – St. Clare's After Dark

When I was an 8th-grader at co-ed St. Clare de Maltese Falcon*, I was deathly afraid of girls – even though I had a mother and four sisters. All my friends were guys, and a couple of them had girlfriends, but I’d been so painfully shy with girls my whole life that I never did. To fill the large blocks of time I spent not dating, I played lots of sports, read lots of books, and watched lots of TV.

While it never occurred to me to use my splendid imagination to figure out what to say to a girl, I did use it to invent a succession of imaginary relationships – from courtship to marriage to children. But my imagination lacked even the most rudimentary knowledge about how those children could ever come about.

Whenever a girl spoke to me I’d become hopelessly tongue-tied. Since girls made me so nervous, I came to the conclusion at a very young age that maybe I should just avoid them altogether. But then one day, a miracle! I got invited up to St. Clare’s to hang out with the cool kids after dark. I was nervous and excited because I knew there would be girls there. I was particularly nervous and excited because I knew The Girl would be there.

Me and The Girl were a match made in heaven. She was Irish. I was Italian. She was freckled. I had a dark tan. She was skinny. I was pudgy. She was beautiful. I had a dark tan.

I really liked her and she seemed to like me. But I guess we were doomed from the start because my only prior date had been with her best friend, and it had ended disastrously thanks to my total ignorance regarding the topic of French kissing. You see, our Catholic-school “Becoming A Person” class had provided as much practical information about sex and sexuality as it did about the inner workings of the internal combustion engine – which is to say, none whatsoever.

And Dad had never had the talk with me. He was busy working two jobs, volunteering at church and going to V.F.W. meetings. Mom never had the talk with me, either. She was busy shopping, cooking, cleaning and doing laundry for a family of nine. Plus, she had a part-time job. Maybe they figured my older siblings would fill me in on the facts of life. Or maybe even my little brother. But none of them ever did. And it never occurred to me to ask any of the siblings who threatened my well-being on a regular basis for advice on how to make out, let alone about how to make a baby.

On my first night up at St. Clare’s, we were just standing around talking until somebody asked if anyone wanted a cigarette. So even though I had never smoked before, I grabbed one as if I’d been smoking my whole life. And after I’d struck a few ridiculous poses puffing on an unlit cigarette, a Bic^® lighter appeared before me and was flicked. As I leaned in to light up, from the deep recesses of my cavernously empty head, a simple, yet idiotic plan emerged:

The first prodigious inhalation I would take – and the only one that would be required – would mimic the humongous breath Hanna-Barbera’s Peter Potamus always took just before he unleashed his monumental Hippo Hurricane Holler. Crossing my eyes would enable me to watch the cigarette burn all the way down, in the blink of an eye, leaving an impossibly long, intact ash dangling from the end of the filter. Then I’d spend the rest of the evening basking in the admiration of those fortunate enough to have witnessed it.  

But that’s not exactly how it went down.

Two seconds into my herculean inhalation, the ember on the end of the cigarette glowed brightly, but made no discernible progress in my direction. I began to cough uncontrollably, as if I had emphysema and had just speed-smoked a carton of Camels^®-without-filters. My eyes flooded with tears, turning everyone into giant, soft-focus amoebas, swaying to the sound of 8th-graders laughing.

And when that coughing jag finally ended and the laughter subsided, something quite unexpected happened. I relaxed. For the first time since I’d arrived. And I finally knew how different it feels when you know the cool kids are laughing with you instead of at you.

And when somebody reached for my cigarette, I pulled it away indignantly and said, “Hey! I ain’t finished with that yet!” and pretended to take another drag before handing it over. So you can probably understand why the first cigarette I ever smoked also happened to be my last.

Once the smoke had literally cleared, I was able to turn my attention to the main reason for my pilgrimage to St. Clare’s that night – The Girl. However, before long I realized my parents’ unusually early curfew was quickly approaching. And when I told The Girl it was time for me to head home, she took my hand and walked me to the corner of 55th and Talman, out of sight from the others.

In an ancient Greek tale, after Orpheus’s true love Eurydice died, he traveled to the underworld to rescue her. Hades, ruler of the underworld, was so moved by Orpheus’s love that he agreed to permit Eurydice to return to the upper world with Orpheus. But there was a catch. Eurydice would have to follow Orpheus at a distance, and if Orpheus looked at her before she had reached the upper world, Eurydice would be returned to the underworld for all eternity. Upon reaching the upper world, Orpheus panicked and turned around to check on Eurydice without realizing she was still in the lower world. And in an instant, she was gone to him forever.

Standing beneath that street lamp with The Girl, I found myself in no-boy’s land. Since I still didn’t know how to kiss, there was as much to fear from acceptance as there was from rejection. I could have asked her if I could walk her home. Or if I could call her sometime. Or if she would teach me how to kiss. But I had no words. Like Michelangelo’s “Schiavo Giovane” (Young Slave), I was imprisoned in a block of stone, unable to move. And in the end, fear trumped love and I mumbled good night and raced across the street.

We were only 30 feet apart, but it felt like a million miles. As I watched The Girl turn and walk away, I knew the heartbreak Orpheus must have felt when he realized his terrible mistake – and she was gone to me forever.

At some point you come to realize that when people say things like “Everything happens for a reason,” and “It’s all for the best,” they’re just trying to console you. And if you look back on your life, you just might see that if a litany of events – some quite painful – had not happened precisely as they had, you might have missed out on all kinds of wonderful, life-altering experiences. But when you’re an adolescent boy who’s as unaware of his ignorance as he is of his innocence, those kinds of aphorisms are meaningless.

That youngster I was thought he was in love. In fact, he knew he was in love. But it wasn’t really love. He hardly knew The Girl. It was simply a combination of physical attraction and an overactive imagination. And even if it didn’t feel like it at the time, maybe everything did happen for a reason. So he could be where he is today. But that being said, perhaps somewhere out there in the multi-verse things had played out differently and he and The Girl are currently enjoying their respective retirements from playing for the Chicago White Sox^® and modeling swimsuits, spending lots of time with their pudgy, gorgeous grandchildren, to whom they explained French kissing and where babies come from in great detail long before any of them entered the eighth grade.

The day after my debut at St. Clare’s after dark I ran into Cathy Damico who shared her simple, frank reassessment of me: “We all thought you were just some kind of brainiac who stayed home and read the dictionary all the time. But you seem pretty okay.” Perhaps not much of a compliment in some circles, but to people from the South Side of Chicago and the island of Scotland – that is high praise indeed.

And from the recesses of that still cavernously empty cranium of mine came my indignant, unspoken reply: “Yagottabekiddinme! Me, Jimmy Klenn, staying home every night to read the dictionary? How ludicrous! How preposterous! How patently implausible!” And without the slightest hint of irony or understanding, I thought: “I mean, sure I read the World Book^® Encyclopedia all the time, but never the darned dictionary!”

“At least almost never.”

* My dear friend J.C. Packard’s oft-repeated misnomer of my beloved alma mater, St. Clare de Montefalco.

Grazie to Joanne and Marietta for their sweet encouragement and gentle kick in my culo.

Chapter 9 – I Once Knew a Fence in Chicago

One afternoon, the summer before fourth grade, we were playing “pitcher’s hand out” in the grass field behind the St. Clare convent. That’s a form of slow-pitch baseball played when you’re short on players. There were only six of us that day so each team had a pitcher, a shortstop and a left-fielder. The team that was batting supplied the catcher, but in the event of a play at the plate, the pitcher would cover home to avoid any conflict of interest on the part of the catcher. We were all right-handed hitters, so anything hit to the right-field side of second base was an automatic out. And since there was no first baseman, if the infielder relayed a ground ball to the pitcher before the batter reached first base or the pitcher successfully fielded a grounder before the batter reached first, the batter was out. Hence the name “pitcher’s hand out.”

             Way out in the deepest part of left-center field was the convent’s fence. (The convent was the building our parish nuns lived in.) Most of the fences in our neighborhood were 4-foot-high cyclone fences – easy to see through and easy to hop over. This fence was a true privacy fence – 6-feet high and made of solid wooden planks that ran horizontally. You couldn’t see through it, under it or over it. That fence was so far from our home plate there was no way any of us could ever jack one over it. Except for Kenny Bartkowiak. Seemed like no matter how deep outfielders played him, Kenny somehow managed to hit the ball over their heads. And on this particular day he got all of one, as he often did, and hit the ball over that fence.

            After Kenny finished rounding the bases, we all gathered around home plate to assess the situation: we didn’t have a back-up ball; it was way too early to call it a day; and it was too far to anyone’s house to go get another ball. So it was decided we’d retrieve the ball from the convent’s yard. As simple as this might sound, it was not an undertaking to be undertaken lightly. If it were any other fence in the neighborhood, the outfielder would have just hopped it without a second thought to fetch the ball. But this was not just any fence. It was a fence with no gaps or holes to peek through anywhere. For all we knew, the yard was inhabited by the kinds of monsters one sees depicted on old sea maps. And nuns lived there. So if any of us did try to sneak a peek over the top of that fence, he did so at the risk of being struck blind.

            So we decided that all six of us would go get it. But when we found ourselves gathered in front of the back gate, we stood as still as fence posts, unsure of how to proceed. After all, the security at a convent must be incredible. The gate was certainly double-bolted and chained shut. Then suddenly, without warning, Kenny lifted the latch and swung the gate open. Considering what was there, we could not have been more surprised if we had seen Hoyt Wilhelm pitching BP to Billy Williams.

            Whenever I recall that moment, I invariably hear harp music (although there was no musical accompaniment whatsoever) as that gate swung open to reveal … an attractive, smiling woman in her mid-twenties, wearing a light yellow, sleeveless blouse, shorts and sneakers, refinishing a small dresser. I wondered “What kind of a sin gets you ‘Ten Hail Marys, an Act of Contrition and refinish a piece of furniture’ for penance?” but was jolted from my reverie by five little words that shattered a lifelong stereotype in an instant: “Hi boys, I’m Sister Kathleen.” Our jaws dropped to our shoe-tops. She didn’t look like a nun! She didn’t dress like a nun! And she certainly didn’t smile like one! “Yer a nun?” gulped Tommy. “No lie?” asked Joey. “Get out!” protested Greg. “No way!” remonstrated Bob. She was quite tickled by our disbelief, and when she reiterated she was indeed a nun, we peppered her with questions about where she was from, how she was dressed and what she was doing at St. Clare. When she told us she’d be teaching fourth graders in the fall, we lost it all over again and told her we’d be fourth graders in the fall. She beamed beatifically and asked us our names. As we all introduced ourselves I kept thinking that every nun we had ever encountered before had been a lot older. A lot more reserved. And dressed in black habits that covered everything except hands and faces. But this new nun was different! This Sister could have been one of our sisters! She could have been a nurse or a waitress or a teller at the bank! She looked just like a regular person! Plus, she didn’t yell at us for hitting a ball into her yard. And she smiled a lot.

            After we’d chatted up Sister Kathleen for a while, one of the guys found our ball and we returned to the field to finish the game. And while I can’t speak for the others, I had a tough time concentrating on baseball the rest of that afternoon. Because for the past couple of days we’d all been complaining about the fact that summer was coming to an end and we’d be going back to school soon. And then we met a new, young nun who was really nice. And friendly. And pretty. And seemed to actually like us. And she would be our teacher that fall at St. Clare, along with other new nuns. And while it might not have met the criteria required by The Vatican, I gotta say I’m pretty sure that was a bona fide miracle. And suddenly it seemed as if maybe the fourth grade at St. Clare de Montefalco wasn’t going be so bad after all.

Chapter 8 – The Apology

It was during the 7^th grade. One night the phone rings. It’s Dave. Dispensing with any small talk, he gets right to the point: “My Dad says I gotta go to the rectory [the parish priests’ house] to apologize to Father T— . Will you go with me?”

I winced, suppressing a groan. I didn’t want Dave to know just how badly I didn’t want to go. I tried to act nonchalant, hoping and praying that I’d find a way to weasel out of Dave’s invitation.

“What’d you do?” I asked.

“I called T— a lying priest,” he replied so matter of factly his words hit me like a slap.

“You WHAT!?!” I heard myself squeak loudly, every trace of nonchalance gone.

“I called him a lying priest. On account of the Bulls tickets,” he explained, and I immediately understood. Father T— had been assigned to St. Clare parish several months earlier. He was kind of like a 1970’s version of Father Chuck O’Malley, Bing Crosby’s character in “Going My Way.” He was 30-ish and outgoing and did something we’d never seen any other priest do before. He played ball with us. Pick-up basketball. He was a decent player who did something else we’d never seen any other priest do before. He exerted himself. Now I’m not saying the other priests never exerted themselves just because they had a housekeeper and a cook and a handyman and a groundskeeper. I’m just saying that if they ever had exerted themselves, we didn’t happen to be around to see it when they did. Like us, he played to win. And we had a few other things in common with him, too – namely the White Sox, Bears, Bulls and Blackhawks.

We went to Comiskey Park for a couple Sox games every season, but only made it to Wrigley when the annual Cubs-Sox game was played there during the All-Star break. I’d never been to a Bears or Hawks game, but did see the Bulls once at the Chicago Stadium – on a Cub Scout outing. But we were way up in the nosebleeds.

Then one day, out of nowhere, Father T— casually says: “You guys wanna go to a Bulls game some time?” “Yeah!” we gushed, thrilled at the thought of seeing our heroes that included Chet “The Vet” Walker, “Stormin’ ” Norman Van Lier, Bob “Butterbean” Love and Jerry “Spider” Sloan from priest-provided, courtside seats. But after his generous offer, whenever Dave brought up the promised Bulls tickets, the good Father’s reply was always the same: “I’ll let you know.” After Dave’s fifth or sixth inquiry about the status of the tickets was met with the same pat answer, Dave shot from the hip with: “You’re not taking us to any Bulls game, you lying priest.”

Father T— had been so taken aback by the bold remark that he didn’t say a word to Dave about it. But he’d apparently said a lot more than a word to Dave’s Dad about it, and that’s why we were in such a pickle. It didn’t help matters that Dave’s dad happened to be an officer in the St. Clare Holy Name Society. In fact, that only made it worse.

“Do you have to go apologize?” I whined.

“If I don’t, I’ll be grounded,” Dave replied.

“For how long?” I asked, wondering if there was any chance I could convince Dave that being grounded for a couple of days might not be so bad.

“Until I apologize,” he explained.

In our experience, parents typically grounded their kids for a day or two for minor infractions, and for a week or two for more serious offenses. We had even once heard of a kid getting grounded for three weeks for stealing a car or robbing a bank, but we’d never been able to definitively substantiate that gross abuse of parental power. But this. This was unheard of! An open-ended grounding that could go on ad infinitum until Dave relented and repented – clearly a violation of the Fifth Amendment. But although the law was on Dave’s side, the court of parental public opinion was not, and any writ of habeas corpus, no matter how persuasively written, would surely fail to garner Dave’s release.

Ever the pragmatist, Dave decided to cut his losses and put that apology in his rearview mirror, pronto – but he needed back-up. That’s where I came in.

“Yeah, I’ll go,” I said, finally giving up on my misgivings, despite the fact that I was scared shitless about the fate that awaited us at the rectory.

So the next day I found myself standing at Dave’s shoulder as he rang the bell to the side door of the rectory. The housekeeper showed us in and had us wait in a library with rich, dark paneling.

Two minutes, which felt like an eternity, passed in silence. Then Father T—, minus his ever-present smile, appeared in the doorway and met Dave’s gaze. Dave looked as cool as the proverbial cucumber while I steeled myself for the ground to open up and swallow the both of us.

But as he approached Dave with his hand extended to shake, Father T— made his fatal mistake. He broke eye contact with Dave, glanced my way, and allowed the faintest “gotcha” smirk to flash across his face.

That’s when Dave the mongoose pounced, pumping Father T—‘s hand as he coldly spat these measured words: “My Dad told me I have to apologize, even though I don’t want to. Sorry. Let’s go, Jim.”

As Dave released the priest’s limp hand and turned towards the door, the color drained from T—‘s face. He stood there stock still and speechless, like one of the statues on the side altar. And when Dave led me from that dark room out into the bright sunshine, I felt as if I’d been plucked from the belly of the whale and safely deposited on Oak Street Beach.

We never heard a word about what had transpired that day in the rectory. And Father T— never joined us in a pick-up game again.

And a few years later, when Father T— decided to leave the priesthood, a number of theories were proffered about his motives for leaving. But I dismissed them all. Because I’d been there the day the Lord had forsaken him and his faith had been shaken to its foundation. The day the Lord had allowed young David to vanquish one of his own soldiers on the battlefield. The day that a few fearlessly uttered words had been slung at their target with such true aim, that they must have been guided by the hand of a righteous God.

Chapter 7 – Head of the Class (or What Did I Kneed?)

Ask my best friends if I am an idiot and I’d wager that most of them, after a brief, polite pause would say something like, “Yeah, he’s an idiot. Nice guy, but you wouldn’t believe what I seen him do this one time.” And while this story certainly will not prove that I am an idiot. It should prove that back in 1970 I definitely had the makings of one.

I can’t remember ever wanting to be the smartest kid in my class. Or the hardest working. Or even the most popular. I just wanted to be the funniest guy in the class. Okay, so maybe I wanted to be the funniest so I would be the most popular, but back in the 6^th grade I was not consciously aware of that connection. I wanted to be so funny that the entire class would burst into hysterical laughter at my shenanigans. So funny that the teacher wouldn’t even punish me for disturbing the class or being mean. Because face it – if you’re committed to improvisational comedy at every given opportunity, there are times when someone besides yourself is going to have to be the butt of the joke.

And speaking of butts, how horrible of a person do you have to be to try to get a laugh with shenanigans that involve a nun’s butt? At the time, not so horrible. In retrospect, there must be a special place in hell for someone who would do such a thing. So one day, as per usual, I’m the last kid to enter my homeroom classroom. And since my desk is at the far end of the room, I have to walk behind Sister Ann Carmena who was standing at her lectern in the front of her 6^th-grade class, patiently waiting for me – the last of the stragglers – to take my seat. And due to my comedic predisposition, as I entered that room I did not see a roomful of 12 year olds. What I saw was an audience. An audience waiting to be entertained. By me. But a few impediments presented themselves to the commencement of an impromptu comic performance: 1) I’d have to do it without the benefit of words, sound effects or music – or risk getting caught and punished. 2) I’d have to perform while walking across the front of the room. And 3) I’d only have a couple of seconds to pull it off.

But then the idea came to me like a lightning bolt from heaven. And as I passed behind the good Sister, I paused for an instant and raised my right leg, thigh parallel to the floor, and pointed my knee at Sister Ann Carmena’s butt, visualizing the accolades I was about to receive in the form of stifled laughter – just as she glanced over her shoulder to see me frozen in time and space, standing two feet behind her, with my knee, poised in mid-air, pointed at her butt. With my heart in my throat I wondered how in the h-e-double-toothpicks I was going to worm my way out of this one, when the sky opened up and a second lightning bolt struck, prompting me into action.

I stepped through and set my right foot on the ground, took a normal step with my left leg, and I pulled my right leg up, pausing in pointed-knee position. Set right foot down. Normal step with left leg. Right leg to paused, pointed-knee position. Step right foot down. Normal step with left leg. Right leg to paused, pointed-knee position. Seven, eight, nine times – all the way across the room to the perceived safety of my desk. The good Sister never said a word. She just slowly shook her head back and forth, from side to side, perhaps wondering if a single saint in heaven had ever dealt with such lunacy, while I busied myself, adopting an utterly unconvincing air of nonchalance.

Sister Ann Carmena, along with 40 other witnesses, had seen the entire thing, from my pantomime knee-to-butt, to every step of that long, painful, hitch-in-my-giddyup walk to my desk. But she didn’t say a word. And for over 40 years I’ve wondered what that saint of a Sister was thinking when she caught my improvised nano-performance. Perhaps it was: “Does that Klenn boy have a neurological disorder that causes involuntary muscle spasms?” Or maybe: “Is he trying to measure the distance from the front of the room to his desk?” Or possibly: “I really need to have a talk with that boy’s Mother.”

But all I know is that Sister Ann Carmena was too nice to be thinking what I would have been thinking had I been in her place, which would have been: “Man, that Klenn kid sure is an idiot!”

And for the next couple days, all the kids at school gave me a wide berth in the hallway. Not because they were afraid I’d try to knee them in their butts. But because they weren’t sure if being an idiot was contagious.

Chapter 6 – Hello, Mr. Chipped

During my 4^th-grade year at St. Clare, any time the weather permitted, the boys in our class played slow-pitch baseball during lunchtime or after school. We’d walk out onto the combination playground/parking lot in our school uniforms and dress shoes, carrying our books and baseball gloves. (Apparently at that point in American history, the notion of separate spaces for kids to play and for cars to be parked had yet to be popularized.) When there were no cars parked out there, we played baseball on the expansive blacktop, which had bases painted on it – in the same orangey color as the parking-space lines.

            I don’t recall having especially good reflexes at that age, but I must have – we all must have – because while a line-drive baseball takes a wonderfully predictable bounce off a blacktop, it comes up off the deck in a hurry.

            When enough cars were parked on the blacktop to interfere with our games, we’d play on the grass field behind the convent. Now I’m not going to say that field was dry, but on a windy day it did remind us of old photos we had seen of the Dust Bowl. When more than 18 guys showed up for a pick-up game, we’d split up into two games, with two home plates set up in opposite corners of that field.

            During one of those lunchtime baseball games I was standing on the sidewalk that ran alongside the first-base line, coaching first. The main reason we used first- and third-base coaches in those games was so errant throws could be fetched quicker, and games wouldn’t be held up for too long.

            So there I was, bent at the waist with my hands resting just above my knees, coaching first base, when someone in the other game hit a towering fly ball into our game’s air space. FYI, baseball etiquette dictated that whenever a ball from one baseball game entered the field of play of another game, time was called in the game that had been intruded upon until the fielder from the other game: retrieved said ball, heaved it to the cutoff man, and safely exited the intruded-upon field. Usually when this happened, the intruding ball just harmlessly rolled into the adjacent field of play, and the players in the intruded-upon game, backed off from the rolling ball. But that towering shot hit on that particular day turned out to be anything but harmless.

            Amazingly, it sailed just beyond our field of play on a fly. Even more amazingly, that damned ball bounced on the sidewalk right in front of me, and proceeded to deliver a stunning uppercut (with over 2,000 years of physics on its side) squarely on the underside of my chinny-chin-chin.
            I was so shocked and startled by the blow that I was unable to suppress the 4th-grade-Catholic-schoolboy-verbal-grenade I launched with extreme prejudice in the general direction of the batter of that well-hit ball who was undoubtedly in mid-home-run trot. (Readers who might be offended by rough language should skip the next sentence. – Ed.) “Ya big nut!” I bellowed, not giving a hoot about who in tarnation heard my explosive outburst of unbridled petulance.

            And while I can’t recall crying on that occasion, if I were to hazard an educated guess based on innumerable previous and subsequent experiences, I would imagine that I cried like a colicky-baby-who-had-just-been-stuck-with-a-diaper-pin-by-an-inept-parent every step of the way to the principal’s office. There, “The Three B’s” of 1960’s-state-of-the-art-Catholic-school-medical-care were kept at the ready to treat everything from scraped knees to compound fractures – Bactine^®, Band-Aids^® and Bufferin^®.

            And while Principal Sister Joseph Therese was very nice, I was pretty sure the “D.D.S.” after her name stood for “Divine Dominican Sisters,” not “Doctor of Dental Surgery.” However, despite her lack of experience in triage dentistry, rather than calling for a trained medical professional, she decided to treat me herself.

            The good sister sat me down and showed me a small vial, about the size of a Chapstick^®. “It tastes like ham,” she assured me, apparently unaware of the fact that I had never really been a big fan of ham, and had been eating it under minor duress my entire life. But because I was reasonably certain that Sister J.T. did not have an alternate little bottle of anesthetic agent that tasted like Mountain Dew^® or Milk Duds^® or Razzles^®, I kept my mouth shut until she asked me to open it.

            Then, with total disregard for best medical practices, she was kind enough to rub that liquid on my chipped teeth with her bare finger. And overwhelmed with gratitude, I was kind enough to not tell her that the numbing medication didn’t taste like ham – it tasted like shit. And if I had said that, the next thing that would have made contact with my teeth would most assuredly have been a bar of soap, and the heretofore cordial tone of my visit to the Principal’s office would have most certainly been irrevocably tainted.

            Epilogue: During my subsequent visit to our family dentist, Dr. Cruickshank, I was informed that since the damage done to my teeth had only been of a cosmetic nature, no action would be taken to repair my pearly whites. (Actually, my parents were told this, not me. Because apparently at that point in American history, doctors were not allowed to speak directly with their patients.) And over the years a litany of dentists have concurred, contending that if my snaggle teeth never caused any physical discomfort, it would be best to just leave them as they are today – horrifyingly chipped.

            And even though I never found out who hit that monstrous shot which led to that freak accident so many years ago, whoever he was, he made quite an impression on me. Quite an impression.