Desk 13
When Sister Mary Agatha would leave the room, I would begin. But first, the geography of our setting: The classroom in Parochial School had 25 desks laid out exactingly in a 5 by 5 grid and 24 were occupied. The distance from the desk to the walls and desk to desk perfectly matched occupying the square part of the room. Only the room was a rectangle, after taking a section of the front area for Sister MA's podium and circular trash can on one side and giant globe on the other. The lone desk in the middle of the 25, Desk 13 from the beginning or the end, had recently been suddenly vacated when the occupant had told her father that she wanted to be a nun, too, just like Sister MA when she grew up and the enraged father took his daughter from our midst forever.
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Now I return to the word 'begin' near the beginning of my story. I would quietly count 1,2,3 after the door would click shut behind Sister MA. Then in unison all 24 of us would turn to the middle empty chair, together speak in monotone, each one slightly above a whisper but the collective voice was heard just outside by Sister MA in her current sister-sister chat through the ventilation system which made remarkable metallic reverberations as an intercom:
"And then there were nun",
followed by a brief 1200 millisecond pause and then two voices (always mine and Cindy, it was our idea after all), slowly shaking our heads,
" none? ",
and the 22 would chant, turning, breaking into 2 banks of 11 each for myself and Cindy, 22 index fingers in the air slightly blocking the passage of the their breath,
" not one "
Sister MA would open the door and poke her head inside to see us all motionless, turned back around with our heads forward and down dissolved into our books.
"Did someone say something?"
A silence on our part and then Cindy, our spokeswoman, would say,
"Not one person spoke"
Sister MA reflected a pause back, squinted while turning her head 17 degrees to the left in a manner later made famous by John Belushi, and then closed the door.
Sponty
When we were young and would get terribly excited, whoever was the least excited (LE) of the bunch would say,
"Stop, or you'll burst into flames with excitement",
and then whoever was the most excited (ME) would say,
"or what, I'll turn into ashes?"
and the LE would finalize,
"a dash of ash to stash in the trash".
And we would all fall down giggling in great excitement hoping not to catch fire spontaneously, and although we didn't know that spont word just yet, we just felt all sponty inside. And then we would sing our Dash/Ash/Stash/Trash song for the next hour or so and giggle until our faces hurt. Oh, that felt so good.
Hold it. In each of those memories I am a little girl with strawberry blond hair, dimples and freckles. Sorry, those must have been someone else's memories, as I am a 50-year-old brown haired man who has never been inside a parochial school; no dimps, no frecks.
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