Baldur

When Baldur needs to wow people with footwear I wear my black & white gangsta shoes.
I'd really like the exact same shoes in deep brown and tan (they call the color 'bone'). They would go with much more of my other stuff.
Here they arehttp://www.onlineshoes.com/mens-stacy-adams-dayton-00605-black-patent-white-p_id45729

Baldur

Baldur didn't buy them from that site.
I wore those to my son's wedding and when I went to see 'Wicked'.
'Wicked' is more enjoyable when you are wearing fantastic footwear.
There were countless pairs of ruby slippers in evidence.

maddyjean08

Wasn't "wicked" the other side of the Wizard of Oz? Like, what the witch was doing.

Baldur

Yes, it's written from the witch's perspective. A very interesting novel

Dragon

I haven't seen Wicked yet but have been informed by my best friend that if it ever comes to Alberta I absolutely must see it. She and her hubby have seen it 3 times in the last year or so in Sydney. I'm not sure they'll ever go to another show again. As for what I have seen, I highly recommend 'Spamalot' to anyone who has ever enjoyed any Monty Python. It's the stage version of Monty Python's and The Holy Grail and, if possible, it's even funnier than the movie. Could not stop laughing at the 'Fetchez les Vache' scene!

marius

Baldur ... what spiffy shoes! Love them! Spouse loved the Wicked book, I've not read it.

Dragon, have been meaning to catch Spamalot ... have heard it's great.

Baldur ... now what I want to know is how Baldur was raised, religiously speaking. Yes I know politics and religion (and something else ???) should never be discussed. But, am not asking for discussion, just a story. The thing is ... your thong-poem (the one where you wrote thong about 100 times) has kind of stuck in my head. It keeps reminding me of visiting the church of my childhood and ... well, I scared the daylights out of my sis cause I'd lit every votice candle in sight. Did look rather like a bonfire.

Sis thought I was suffering from some grave sin. While entirely possible that marius has grave sins, at that moment she was merely trying to drive away a sever case of the heebie jeebies.

Am over that now, but when I was six, the nuns said the way to love God was like the Christians loved God. So, if Romans threw me to the lions, I was supposed to stand there and smile while being eaten alive! Can laugh about it now, but took years to get to laughter. I mean, seriously, do you think I had a good opinion about God after hearing that he wanted me to smile while being eating alive? (And for some reason, I'm laughing my head off right now. Probably delayed release of early psychic trauma.) : )

Baldur

Baldur was raised a Roman Catholic. Our parish church was beautiful yet spooky in a very gothic way.
I came to believe very early that the nuns who were teaching me in the church-run school were complete liars. Baldur was not a cynical child but I do credit myself for being somewhat bright. They told us stories of their experiences that didn't ring true, sometimes outrageous lies about what was going on in the world and lessons that verged on the medieval.
These things colored my life.
What sealed their complete loss of my respect was when I got punished for something that I just wasn't responsible for.
This wasn't an isolated case, Baldur wasn't their only victim. It just became amazingly clear that they taught by fear.
That school closed after I finished third grade. The local doicese had to shutter many schools that year do to financial difficulties.
When I transferred to a different parochial school, one with somewhat more modern nuns and even 'lay' teachers (matthew, no comments here please) Baldur was playing a different game.

Baldur

-doicese +diocese.

But back to the Church building itself.
It was not an ancient building, dating only to the 1920s. On the site had been a Greek Orthodox Church that had closed and the property was somehow obtained by the Catholic diocese
The exterior wasn't very exciting, more minimalist than anything else, but the interior was dark and exotic.
There were murals everywhere and the most gorgeous stenciled details outlining the architectural features. Looking back now they must have been based on Lithuanian folk art. This parish was Mono-national, everyone at first were Lithuanian immigrants.
There were tortuted statues with gory bloody wounds, every image had pained looking eyes. It could easily give people nightmares.
Then there was an image of God in heaven, on the ceiling directly over the aisle by the front rows of pews.
This was God with the big grey paternal beard, his hand upward, palm facing forward in benediction. You only saw his upper body and head rising from a tumult of clouds. Spread out behind him were the glorious blue heavens and an array of stylized stars of burnished gold leaf, looking like jewelry.
Baldur would sit there looking directly up at God.
In this parish the schoolchildren did not sit in the pews with their parents.
They were herded to the front rows and guarded by the militaristic nuns.
We were often scolded during the mass, prompted as to what responses were necessary, and more than once some unlucky kid got cuffed across the back of his/her head.
Those were evil days.

Baldur

-do +due

marius

Wonder if your nuns were related to ours? Ours definitely taught by fear and marius also got in trouble for something she had not done. They liked to make examples of us. However, there were 52 kids in my 6th grade class so, from my adult perspective the nuns were not treated nicely either. Don't recall them telling wild stories about their own experiences, more wild bible stories that troubled deeply. (i.e. the guy who was told to sacrifice his son and at the last minute was told he didn't have to. Marius' opinion about that was that God was one troubled being. Marius was very literal and if God knew all, there was no need to test believers. Duh.)

What does Baldur mean he was playing a different game?

Baldur

A brief timeline for my audience who oddly seem interested in these things.
Grades 1-3 were spent at Saint A. School, until it closed
Grades 4-6 were spent at Saint B. School, until it closed
Grade 7 was spent at Saint C. School, then St. B. reopened
Grade 8 was spent at the new improved Saint B. School
Grades 9-12 were spent at L. Academy
All of the above were Catholic Schools.
Baldur no longer believes he is Catholic, maybe you cannot undo such things but if it's possible I have managed.

marius

What I meant is that there were 52 kids in ONE room, for one teacher. That is a horror I cannot fathom for any teacher.

Baldur

What became apparent years later when Baldur would run into classmates from the hell years was that we were all scholastically ahead of our peers.
I noticed this in 4th grade. The work at this school was nowhere near as hard as it should be. Even by High School the few of us still together were breezing through classes without all that much effort.
It cannot be that we were all 'gifted'. This was beaten into us.
Anyway by the time I rolled into 4th grade I was taking things much more casually. Baldur rarely studied, If I were to learn something, it got absorbed the first time around.

marius

Wow - Baldur went to may different schools. marius attended public kindergarten, then eight years of the same Catholic Elementary school. It was not a happy place. We wore uniforms, which I liked as have never been that interested in clothes. But, we'd have dress up days now and then. Absolutely hated those as the poor kids were so poor that they had no dress up clothes to wear. It seemed evil to me. We were supposed to wear uniforms to spare embarrassment and yet, we had those evil dress up days.

One time a nun stood my brother up, grade 5, and asked if anyone liked him to raise their hand. Of course no one raised their hand. These were the days when kids were Terrified of their teachers, or (giggle), their nuns.
Not sure my brother ever got over that. And, since the Church was the authority, my parents did nothing. Nothing.

Baldur

Sister Mary Barbara had Grades 1 and 2 in her classroom, about 30 students.
Sister Mary Evil Prune was in the next room, she had grades 3,4,5 and 6 which amounted to about 45 students.
By necessity the nuns spent little time with each class. They would stand in front of the section with the grade, speak briefly, assign something and move on. We learned independent study quickly.
We also absorbed what she was teaching the other grades as they were seated next to us.

marius

We were also "scholastically ahead of our peers." When attending public school as a Freshman, I was astounded at how easy it was to get an A grade, even in the honors program. Did Baldur have two-three hours of homework a night starting around third grade? Marius always did.

Baldur

I didn't mention kindergarten, but indeed Baldur went there for a year. That was a public School however, in no way did it prepare us for nuns,

Baldur

I had that much homework perhaps through 7th grade.
8th grade was quite strange and there was a light workload.
I spent a good part of the year working on arts and crafts.

Baldur

We also wore uniforms through the 7th grade. Then it was 'hippy year'.
High Schoold had a strict dress code (jackets and ties, it was all-male) but it wasn't a uniform per se.

marius

As for the evil nuns ... have wondered what made them like that? Don't have an answer, but when marius dated a Catholic for a short time, she met his sister, a nun. She turned out to be an okay person. When I related some of the horror stories about my early schooling she said, "In that time, in your parish, most of the nuns were farm girls. And, at that time period, about 90% of nuns were victims of molestation. Joining the convent was their escape. But, of course, there was no treatment back then. God was supposed to take care of all."