Murderous Rage!

      One morning, in the prison yard, just before the first bell, I was proudly wearing my new jean jacket. I fancied that I looked as rugged and handsome as Nick Adams who played “The Rebel” or Capt. Lee Crane on “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.” Just as I got to the feeling okay with the world a group of girls started teasing me. I was shy but good-natured about it. They decided that the teasing to another level and the girls started to kick me in the shins and it hurt like hell.

      I tried to walk away but they followed me and still kept on kicking. A boy that was hanging around with them started to join in the girl’s fun, and he started to kick me as well. Back then, I was taught that men did not hit girls’…no matter what. All of them were enjoying the kicking fest. I thought I could take the humiliation and the pain, but my instincts dictate otherwise. The boy did not kick me as often as the girls, nor was he the last one to kick me.

      However, I have always been a reserve quiet boy, but over the years I have found that down deep, on occasion a murderous temper erupts. This was the first time that the dark part of me burst forth, something in me snapped and the response was savage. I leaped for the boy and grabbed him around the throat and started to choke him as hard as I could and I was shaking him violently. My vision constricted to a red hazed tunnel and I was gibbering. Half of the girls ran off in terror and some of them went off to grab a nun. The other half stayed there and rained kicks and punches upon my body, trying to distract me from my murderous intent. I was almost entirely heedless of their blows as I continued to choke the life out of the boy who had unwittingly joined in on the fun.

      His eyes started to dim and his body sagged. If the weight of his body had not caused him to fall or if the all the girls would have left at the instant of my assault, I believe I would have killed him.

      As it was the combination of them hitting me, and the weight of his body falling heavily to the pavement that caused me to have some of my mental sense come back.

      In horror I realized what I was doing…what I had almost done. I ran off into the crowd to hide from everyone.

      I circled around and mixed in another crowd up on the hill. I could see two nuns examining the boy’s neck, which even from that distance appeared as if the bruising had already begun. He was gasping and crying and the girls and he were trying to give the nuns a description of the raging thug that had assaulted him.

      Like an experienced felon, I took off my jacket, hoping that I would be less likely to be identified, and waited till the last to enter the school when the first bell rang. I felt ashamed and afraid of what I had done and what may happen to me.

      I was very frightened of the nuns who I thought were very odd in appearance.

      This fear was not just the result of an over active imagination, since most of them proved to be both scary and very brutal.

At the time I often saw in my mind’s eye that many of them were male Nazi war criminals in hiding, Nazi Nuns if you will. I often imagined that when ever a nun’s sleeve would roll up accidentally without warning, I was afraid that a Nazi tattoo would show itself, then the self conscious nun(s) would jerk their arm away quickly to hide the tattoo.

I feared what would happen to me if this were ever to occur. 

      Other times I often wondered if the nuns belonged to the secret order of ninja nuns.

      The weapons of the Ninja Nuns were rulers, yardsticks, pointers, chalk-erasers and any other implement that was the most convenient to use as a weapon. I have seen nuns’ use the heavy cross and beads that hung around their necks as weapons. Hell, in my child’s mind I saw their entire bodies as weapons. These Nuns were as proficient as any Samurai. They were well trained in doling out pain and punishment.

      During my entire sentence at St. Francis of Assisi, there was only one nun that I really liked; her name was Sister Grace Beatrice. She was in charge of homeroom; I also had her for a few classes. Sister Grace and my mother developed a special relationship. As I said, the rest of the Nuns terrified me to the point of nausea.