Darkwater Syndicate
Join The Syndicate!
  • News
  • Store
    • Free Books
    • New Releases
    • Action & Thrillers
    • Comedy
    • Fantasy
    • Horror
    • Science Fiction
    • Hardcover Special Editions
    • Special Interest
  • Authors
  • Our Staff
  • Awards
  • Publish With Us
  • About Us

The Disintegration Of The Virgin

12/9/2013

0 Comments

 
When I was a kid, I went to a parochial school run by nuns. Now, don't get me wrong, nuns are great as far as people go, but the ones in charge of schools can be as tough as drill sergeants.

By sixth grade my classmates and I had developed a nasty habit. Every morning before the homeroom teacher arrived, we would play dodgeball. Our classrooms were long and narrow, like boxcars, so we'd get on either side of the classroom and hurl rubber balls at each other until the teacher showed up. Sometimes, when we felt like upping the ante, we'd throw compasses -- not the mapping tool but the type you use to draw perfect circles -- at each other. We were twelve and liked to live dangerously.

So one morning, in the midst of a heated classroom dodgeball fight, the biggest kid in the grade hurls the ball with all his arm behind it. The ball goes ovular with the force of the throw. For all his effort, this gets him nothing more than a narrow miss.

Then something happened that no one had counted on. The ball flew within inches of the porcelain statuette of the Virgin Mary the teacher kept on her desk. The force of its passing wobbled the statuette the tiniest bit. That's when everything went into slow-motion. Everyone held his breath as the statue looked like it was going to tip into a headfirst dive for the floor. It rocked back onto its base and stood erect, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Then the dodgeball hit the chalkboard just behind the desk and careened back into the statuette. It was a solid full-body impact that swept the statuette clear off the desktop and onto the linoleum floor. The statuette shattered. Everyone in the classroom took a collective gasp of horror. With the teacher due to arrive in less than five minutes, we were screwed. 

The big kid and I bounded across the classroom to the teacher's desk and gathered up all the pieces we could find, then reassembled the statuette with project glue. To our credit, we did a heroic job in under a minute. The statuette was mostly intact. We set it back onto the desk, and when its head drooped ever so slightly, we gave it a gentle nudge back into place.

Our teacher -- a take-no-prisoners sort of nun -- arrived to find us all seated and quiet. This immediately sparked her ire because for the entire year she had been teaching us, we never were this well-behaved.

"What happened?" she asked the class, arms crossed and foot tapping.

Her question was met with silence.

"You... you did something," she said, rounding the desk to her chair. "And you're going to tell me."

A fine sweat broke on my brow as her hand went for the desk drawer. You see, in sixth grade our teacher had this big metal desk that the U.S. army had surplussed back in the '60's. When it came time for the army to get new desks, they sold all their old ones to our school. Any time you opened or shut the desk drawer it made a sound like a marching band brass section tossed down several flights of stairs. But it wasn't the noise so much that had me nervous -- our teacher had a penchant for slamming the drawer hard whenever she was upset.

Nuns are creatures of habit. Sure enough, she yanked the drawer and slammed it into the desk with tremendous force, the clatter reverberating off the classroom walls. At the moment of impact, the statuette imploded, collapsing into itself and scattering bits of porcelain everywhere.

Our teacher's eyes got huge. She clutched at her breast, staggered backward and braced against the chalkboard for support.

"Who!" she demanded. "Who did this?"

Silence. Then, a single hand went up. A quiet voice from the center aisle said, "You did."

Those two words got us recess detention for a month.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Live Feed

    Tweets by @DrkWtrSyndicate

    Archives

    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013

    Categories

    All
    Action
    Adventure
    Airplanes
    Airports
    Airwave
    Aliens
    Anthropology
    Apologies
    Archaeology
    Archeology
    Art
    Asian
    Asylum
    Auctions
    Banking
    Bar
    Barajas
    Biscayne Landing
    Bosses
    Buffet
    Business
    Cafe
    Cats
    Cellphone
    Cheese
    Childhood
    Coffee
    Coffee Shops
    College
    Comedy
    Communism
    Conspiracy
    Creative Jackass
    Creepy
    Cuba
    Cynicism
    Dade County
    Dark
    Darkwater Syndicate
    Death
    Deli
    Dentistry
    Desperation
    Dessert
    Dolls
    Dragons
    Dreams
    Egypt
    Environmentalism
    Fantasy
    Farm
    Fiction
    Film
    Fiu
    Flash Fiction
    Food
    Funny
    Galleons
    George Lucas
    Ghost
    Ghost Story
    Growing Up
    Growing Up
    Guest Author
    Gullwing
    Haiku
    Harrison Ford
    Hipsters
    History
    Hotel
    H.P. Lovecraft
    Humor
    Insanity
    Insurance
    Insurance Horror Stories
    Interama
    Interview
    Introduction
    Jail
    Jfk
    Jobs
    Journey
    J.R.R. Tolkien
    Jury Duty
    Kennedy
    Kids
    Korean
    Krushchev
    Lovecraft
    Love Poem
    Madness
    Madrid
    Magic
    Makeup
    Manchego
    Miami
    Missile Crisis
    Money
    Motorcycle
    Munisport
    Music
    Mythology
    Nightmare
    Nikita
    Numbers Station
    Ocean
    Odyssey
    Office
    Oleta River
    Orange Chicken
    Paranoia
    Parenting
    Photo
    Pirates
    Poetry
    Poker
    Prison Chef
    Pub
    Quest
    Quirky
    Rage
    Rage Comic
    Rant
    Red Scare
    Restaurant
    Rules Of Sex
    Russians
    Sad
    Sail
    Sandwich
    Sarcasm
    Sci-fi
    Sean Connery
    Seaports
    Sex
    Shadow People
    Ships
    Shopping-cart
    Snark-attack
    Sorcery
    Soup
    Spain
    Steven Spielberg
    Suicide
    Supernatural
    Surreal
    Suspense
    Swords
    Telephone
    Tension
    The-hobbit
    Trains
    Transit Dreams
    Travel
    Troll
    Undead
    University
    Ussr
    Voyage
    Wireless
    Wizard
    Work
    Writing
    Zombie

Copyright © 2017 Darkwater Syndicate, Inc. All rights reserved.