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.

Chapter 5 – More Pane: That’s the Way the Ball Bounces

The window Charlie and me had riddled with slingshot fire was on the second floor of the house across the alley, due west of ours. A couple years later, me and my little brother unwittingly (half-wittedly?) turned our attention to the south, across 58^th street, to the two-story apartment building with lots of unbroken windows. The building was owned by an unforgettable, first-generation immigrant from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, the Ukraine or Russia, whose name escapes me.

One night Charlie and me started up a game of “Three Outs” with Tommy Scanlon, who lived nearby on 56^th and Maplewood. Tommy was a year younger than me and a year older than Charlie. Even though Tommy was younger than me and smaller than my little brother, I was certain he could kick my ass. Not because Tommy was known as being particularly tough, but I do recall being fairly confident that pretty much everybody in the neighborhood could kick my ass. You know, if they could catch me.

For some reason, we started up our game of Three Outs after dark – that reason being that our parents were out for the evening. In Three Outs the “hitter” bounces a 79¢ hard-rubber baseball off of a brick wall, while one or more fielders try to make plays on the “batted” ball. I had played Three Outs for years, but oddly enough had never heard of a game being played against a wall with so many windows – or at night. Anyway, I guess we should have realized we were being a little reckless before we ever started that game, but believe you me, it is so much easier to see reckless in retrospect.

Here’s how Three Outs works: The “batter” throws the ball high off the wall. • If a fielder catches the rebounding ball on a fly – batter is out. • If a fielder cleanly fields a ground ball, throws the ball at the wall and catches it on a fly – batter is out. • A ground ball gets beyond the reach of a fielder or is muffed by a fielder – batter runs to first. • A ball “hit” over every fielder’s head – home run. • Ball sails through second-floor, hallway window of neighbor’s apartment building – everybody runs for their respective home.

Now if you know me, when it comes to taking responsibility for one’s actions, I’m a big believer in doing whatever is necessary to avoid taking the rap. But I must admit it was most likely me who done the deed, because we had a pretty substantial area of window-free, brick wall to work with (and decent visibility thanks to the corner streetlight), and Charlie and Tommy both had much better arms than me. My throws tended to sail high and to the right. Oddly enough, my extraordinarily weak throwing arm actually used to help out my teammates by giving them more time to react to my errant throws. Every cloud …

It doesn’t matter who launched it. The fact is that said rubber ball sailed through that second floor hallway window, and unlike the slingshot incident, made a considerably louder, more audible racket. In fact, we were so aware of the clatter that the three of us managed to run the eighth-of-a-mile to the alley and were peering around the corner of our garage, heads stacked totem-pole style, by the time the glass hit the pavement.

We held our breaths, waiting for a torrent of witnesses to appear and for all hell to break loose. But not a single, solitary witness appeared. And not the slightest trace of hell broke loose. What had sounded to the three of us like Armageddon had gone unnoticed by the entire neighborhood, including every tenant in the apartment building.

It was as if God had hit the mute button for everybody in the world except us, perhaps to protect us from the long arm of the law and keep us on the relatively straight and narrow, or maybe it was just so loud to us because of our increased adrenaline flow. But our luck was holding strong! Our parents were still out and it appeared as if no one had heard a thing. (If a window breaks in the forest and no one hears it …)

If the ball had returned to the street, I wonder if we’d have been tempted to resume the game in spite of the broken glass. But the ball was inside the apartment building, and we knew we had to do the right thing. Or at least we knew who to go to to find out what the right thing to do was – our sister Marietta. And when you think about it, the whole thing was really her fault because she was supposed to be watching us that night, but it’s probably too late for her to learn anything from that lesson at this late date.

Mar told us that since obviously no one was home, to go ahead and leave a note for the building’s landlord and then just wait for his response. So I suggested: “Dear Mr. Landlord Guy, We broke your window. Ha, ha, ha. Signed, Anonymous.” So even though Mar surely must have recognized how appropriately ironic it would be to balance such a tragic event with a comedic resolution, she simply reminded us that we just so happened to know the building’s landlord, and he just so happened to be a pretty nice guy.

So we swept up the glass and left a note explaining what had happened, made an offer of restitution, and signed our names. Then we rewrote the note and signed our real names. And the next day Mr. Landlord Guy was so cool about the whole thing we just couldn’t believe it. No yelling. No threats. He didn’t even look annoyed. Instead of asking for the cash to replace the window, he replaced it himself and just asked us to shovel his walk one time when the first big snow came.

Now his building was on a corner, which meant he had four-times as much sidewalk as non-corner dwellers. Even so, for the longest time I though we got off so easy. But then one morning I woke up and realized we hadn’t gotten off so easy after all.

Mr. No Yelling No Threats Not-Even-Annoyed Landlord Guy never gave us our ball back!