Starting the school year

Next week my oldest starts school - 3rd grade.

I personally remember third grade with some fondness because it was the first year I didn't have to go to Catholic school. In fact one of my fondest memories of 2nd grade was waiting for the bus one day while a nun handed us slips of paper. She said that if our parents couldn't help raise the money, the school would have to close. I remember very distinctly saying "Yay!" and the nun giving me one of those looks that adults everywhere give 7-year-olds who are little pricks. And she knew my parents would never see that piece of paper.

Still, and as an aside, it doesn't beat the day when ... signing up for 1st grade no less ... (a fact my mother will abashedly confirm)- that I physically punched a nun in the stomach and told her to go f-herself. But I actually said the 'f' - and I'm sure that set a bit of a precedent for my short-lived Catholic school career. At the very least it bought me an extra day because there was no signing-in that day for sure.

So it's not without a certain amount of irony that today I started school again - a PhD course - and at...you may haved guessed, a Catholic school. Our Lady of the Lake University - founded in 1895 by some nuns who probably thought it would be a good idea if people in Texas could read.

Oddly, and perhaps again ironically, this is my second Catholic school - Seton Hall being the first where I got my masters. But OLLU is a little different. At SHU the learning team got together at a school-sponsored event that featured an open bar. That, I hasten to admit, was pretty awesome and still is one of the great things about Catholic gatherings of almost any sort - weddings, funerals, and as it turned out in that instance, education -- Free booze. Fantastic.

At OLLU, however, class started a little differently - with a prayer. Having spent three years teaching ROTC at a military school I was quite used to a certain element within the ranks of professorial-types doing everything in their power to remove any vestige of prayer from any event they had to attend. They said it was offensive to them to sit there like they were something they were not - and that is "believers".

I'm not sure why this kind of thing bothered them, because I'm certain they liked to think they sat there not being complete and utter dick-heads. They didn't mind prostletyzing liberal politics, but try to make them attend an event with the slightest nod to a diety not directly aligned with their union, and you'd think someone had just given them a years' supply of styrofoam take-out containers.

If you ever want to see the wheels of decision-making come to a grinding halt - get a couple dozen PhD holders in a room with no adult guidance. Makes Congress seem like quiz show contestants on speed. All decisions are measured in geologic time.

I certainly don't mean to indict all university professors, but sadly, as in the country at large, the scant few who make up the 'easily-offended' are the continuously squeaky wheels whom most professors just want to shut the hell up. But they are squeezed out by political correctness which only allows 'free speech' if it fits certain parameters.

In fairness, most PhDs I know are really very cool, more than reasonable and not asses at all. But my, how they do like to talk about things for an unwholesome amount of time before coming to a decision. But I digress.

So, while I'd never consider myself 'religious' to an extent my mother would really like, I guess I just kind of appreciate the fact my professor did a prayer at all -- it's like flipping a giant bird to those academics who feel it's their job to stifle the rights of others. And you know, that kind of table-turning appeals to me on a number of different levels.

I didn't choose the university I now attend because it was Catholic - that's just serendipity I think - or maybe, somewhere out there in the great expanse, there's a nun on a cloud who'se just been biding her time as she pulls her tiny little fist of vapor out of my gut and smiles while whispering, "F-off to you too!"