Two Bios, One Obituary

(Originally published 9/2/19)

It being Labor Day, the unofficial end of yet another summer, I cannot help but hark back to those habitually awful first days of school. My earliest remembrance is—fittingly—the onset of my formal education: kindergarten at P.S. 7, which was a couple of blocks from where I called home. I hadn’t yet turned five in September of 1967, which made me ineligible to attend nearby St. John’s parochial grammar school. So, I didn’t get to experience the legendary Mrs. Fagan, who taught generations of kids and seemed both forever old and forever large. After this one brief shining moment of public schooling—in Mrs. Rothman’s kindergarten class—it was on to St. John’s and the first grade. 

I vaguely recall the first day of first grade and walking with my mother and my best friend, Johnny, and his mother, to the schoolyard on Godwin Terrace, which sat atop a rocky bluff overlooking the El and the perpetually passing Number 1 trains. A foreboding feeling was in the ether. While Catholic schools were changing for the better at that time—with the more sadistic nuns, brothers, and lay teachers slowly but surely falling out of favor—the fledgling days of school still amounted to the spin of a roulette wheel. One could get lucky, as I did, by getting Mrs. Victory for a teacher. She was a nice lady who drove a big car and lived on the next block from me. But in an adjoining classroom was another woman—with a Miss in front of her name and a reputation that wasn’t nearly as warm and fuzzy as Mrs. Victory’s—for the unlucky.

A year later in the second grade, Lady Luck shined on me once more when I got the especially kind Mrs. Kehayas as my teacher. But, sadly, some of my less fortunate peers were saddled with Sr. Lorraine, a paleo-throwback to the no-holds-barred bashing-and-trashing-of-kids era, which—peculiarly—is celebrated by a fair share of folks on social media. Sister Lorraine was Roseanne Barr with a bad habit and a pencil-thin but nevertheless visible mustache. My best friend, Johnny, once incurred her wrath and got body-slammed during First Holy Communion practice in the church. His transgression: keeping a chewed-up straw from “hot lunch” in his shirt pocket.

Fast forward now to the first days of high school—orientation—when Sister Elizabeth, a.k.a “Old Stone Face,” informed all assembled freshman: “Your days are numbered.” Our schedules were not Monday-through-Friday based, we learned, but One-through-Six instead. The intimidating Dean of Students refused to welcome us because, he said, we had done nothing as of yet to earn a welcome. At sophomore orientation a year later, he bellowed, rather theatrically as I recall, “Welcome to Cardinal Spellman!” (By the way, the photos included in this essay are a sampling of my high school ties, which were borrowed from my father's rather eclectic closet collection. In the hip 1970s, boys could sartorially express their individuality at CSHS. Now they wear a uniform.)

In my first day of freshman-year homeroom, a boy sat across from me who was right out of Central Casting. He was the stereotypical high school movie genius and nerd in appearance. Nicknamed “Poindexter” by galoots, he spoke in a high-pitched, squeaky tone. When he first perused his schedule, which had been passed out to all of us, Poindexter said aloud to no one in particular, “I have two bios.” I eventually deduced that he was referring to Biology class, which came attached—on one occasion in the six-day week—to an additional “lab” class.

This fourteen-year-old “genius” in my midst was genuinely smart. I remember him pensively sketching a complex, multi-dimensional cube at his desk as we awaited the sounding of the bell that alerted us that we had three minutes to get to our first class of the day. Detention, the dreaded “jug,” awaited the tardy. In the end, the kid with the two bios turned out to be a truly nice fellow. He parried his more oafish peers’ verbal thrusts with elan and grudgingly earned their respect.

And so today—in this vastly different day and age from when I attended P.S. 7, St. John’s, and Cardinal Spellman, too—I wondered whatever became of my former classmate? His name was very commonplace, but with a little Paul Drake and Jim Rockford ingenuity, I believed I could locate him. And I believe I did and that he's no longer among the living. I accept now that I am at an age with fewer and fewer guarantees of tomorrows.

So, now, permit me to resurrect one final first day—at Manhattan College—when I encountered for the very last time my high school classmate. We met outside of the school's Bursar’s Office and he said to me, “It was so much easier for us at Spellman, when everything was taken care of for us.” In other words, when our parents paid the tuition through the mail and that was that. And so there we were—suddenly and without fair warning or fanfare—young adults. Two bios and one obituary later, that’s life in a Petri dish. And Old Stone Face was right: Our days really are numbered.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)