While speaking with an old friend from the old neighborhood this morning, our conversation foraged far afield. Our repartee typically veers from past memories of people, places, and events to contemporary people, places, and events. Today, we briefly revisited Cardinal Spellman High School (CSHS), which we both attended and graduated from forty years ago.
Once upon a time, I took a course called Finite Math in my senior year there, which was taught by an acerbic Irish nun with a frightful wig named Sister Catherine. I don’t remember much about Finite Math, except that Sister Catherine referred to some peculiar number theory as the “residue class,” phonetically pronouncing it in an affected manner for maximum comedic effect. Wow, I hadn't thought about integers in years. Another Sister Catherine classic involved the returning of test papers. She would leisurely stroll up and down the rows of desks, plopping the individual tests in front of her respective students. Throughout this faux-somber ritual, she would remark over and over and over as the circumstances warranted: “You know what you are doing," "You know what your doing," “You don’t know what you are doing.” Simpler times in the classroom, I daresay.
A few years after graduation—during my college days—I worked in a mom-and-pop shop called Pet Nosh, which sold pet food and supplies in the nascent days of the pet care trade. Located in the city of Yonkers, a stone’s throw from where I lived in the Northwest Bronx and not too far from Cardinal Spellman High School in the Northeast Bronx, I serviced scores of familiar faces. Regular customers for a spell were none other than Sister Catherine and CSHS’s perpetually scowling and always-disagreeable librarian. Outside of her literary domain, though, the latter was surprisingly genial and so was the venerable Sister Catherine, who either didn’t recognize me or chose not to acknowledge that she did. I believe it was the former. Yes, away from the fast and furious educational milieu, these two Sisters of Charity revealed that they clearly adored their canine friend back at the convent, which was on school grounds. I’d bet dollars to donuts that their dog was shown a heaping helping more love and affection than the pair showed their untold two-legged students through the years.
It always felt strange waiting on customers whom I knew in some way from the past—while they were reciprocally clueless or pretended to be—particularly ghosts from high school and grammar school, or largely forgotten locals. I recall recognizing some pretty obscure folks from my life and times, including a gym teacher from CSHS, a fellow who joined the staff half way through my high school years and taught only the younger grades. The moment I spied his face and modest Fu Manchu mustache, I visualized his picture in my yearbook. When the man paid by personal check, I absolutely knew that the Fu Manchu spoke volumes. And now for some further random recollections and observations...
McDonald's attempting to remain relevant, I suppose. While I had no idea what the "J Balvin Meal" was, I sampled their spicy nuggets last week. I'll give them a marginal thumb's up. The uber-spiciness helps mask the reality of what you are actually eating.
Bear in mind: To live in the Meatpacking District in 2020 will cost you an arm and a turkey leg.
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