Long Ago...Seems Like Yesterday

I was pretty uncoordinated as a kid.
I’d stumble over a gnat if it was in front of me.
At St. Monica’s Girl’s High School, I played
basketball for P.E.
I was pretty good, except I kept popping the
ball into the wrong hoop.
The teacher pulled me off the court and put me
in the gym basement, along with my friend, Theresa, and gave us ping-pong paddles.

We stunk at ping-pong.
Everything but the table was a target.
The ball was flying off the ceiling, the windows.
You name it.
We made so much of a ruckus, the teacher, a
dyed-in-the-wool mean-as-a-drill instructor
woman [with little emphasis on the woman part]
came bursting into the room…
I think we cracked a half dozen ping-pong balls.
She ranted and roared for a few minutes, saying
she’d never known such two inept girls in all of her life.
If anything, Theresa and I were enthusiastic.

We both flunked first aid.
I could never figure that one out.
What’s so hard about putting on a bandage?
Oh, you’re supposed to clean the wound first..?
But there isn’t a real wound…

I went two years at St. Mo’s before transferring
to a closer school.
I wonder if Sister Ignatius ever found the bunnies
that were bunny-napped from the bio lab…?