My formal education effectively ended in the eighth grade. I attended a Catholic parochial school for eight years. I do retain memories of that experience, some of them not so fondly but now recalled with humor. One is of a nun aptly named Sister Barbarossa, of the order of St. Joseph, a six-foot-plus ogre tough enough to beat up the school’s football players, and with a permanently red face that reflected a high blood pressure problem, congenital anger, or constant inebriation. She would persecute the disobedient and dream up unusual punishments. She often whacked my knuckles with a wooden ruler for doodling instead of studying, and many times made me sit in the leg space beneath her desk and kicked me with her brogans.
