It's not easy to see, but I'm wearing a school beanie on my head. A half beanie. It was a law. Probably the 11th Commandment, that I forgot to memorize.Only girls wore them.
Legend had it that our heads would fall off, or something, if we didn't wear one.
Sometimes I would wear it to sleep just so I didn't forget to wear it to school the next day.
Sometimes it would get lost in my blankets and I would leave it there.
It had a very small headband sewn in that would pinch the sides of my head and ride up so it looked like my beanie was a trucker hat way before that look was cool.
If you forgot your beanie during the week it was mostly okay, if your teacher wasn't a Nun. If she was (and mine usually were) you would get detention and have to stand against the wall at recess and suffer humiliation as the other kids played and you pretended that you wanted to stand there and watch. I used to stand as far from the wall as possible so it looked like I was visiting the detention kids and not part of them. I forgot my beanie a lot because I couldn't stand wearing anything on my head since I don't look good in hats .
The entire school would attend Mass every Friday and for the girl's that meant a beanie must be worn.
I never forgot my beanie for Friday Mass.
Why?
Because, if you forgot your beanie you were sent to the bathroom to rip off a single sheet of toilet paper and the Nun's would pin it to your head with a straight pin or a bobby pin, whichever they had handy and could be pulled out of the depths of their habit.
Some forward thinking parent started a petition or rally or something and had them banned from our uniform code a few years into my education. We only had to wear them for Friday Mass.
There was nothing cool about those beanies. . .
except. . .
they covered the fact that I had a severe case of bed head so I started a school wide campaign to bring them back.
9 comments:
We had to wear a full beanie...think about a hot, itchy, plaid BOWL on top of your head! One day my best friend, who was of Italian/Hawaiian descent and had more hair than you could shake a stick at, had enough. She folded hers in half and bobby pinned it to the very back of her head where you could barely see it and casually stood in line for Mass. When God didn't immediately strike her dead we all ran for the bathroom and pinned on our new 1/2 beanies! By 8th grade we progressed to folding them into 1/4's which resulted in a really weird,bulky plaid wedge hanging off the back of our heads but who cared? If you never turned your head no one was the wiser and you could finally look and feel COOL!
That is some friggin' scary ass school you went to.
We never had to wear a Beanie or any other kind of hat when I went to Catholic school. Thank goodness. I despised wearing a skirt. I used to wear shorts under mine...so that when we played on the playground...we really could. Without boys making comments about our panties.
One day, I wore navy pants under my skirt. Not jean, slacks. But, I had to take them off...and then I still had playground issues...
Can anyone actually explain the logic for the beanie's existence in the first place? Was is some kind of porthole that connected your chakra to the divine one?
Honestly, Rosemary, I don't know how you turned out so normal (and wonderful) with all of that insanity swirlling around you on a daily basis!!!
At my school if we forgot our beanie or chapel veil we had to fold up kleenex and wear that like a folded beanie. It was a triangle of paper hanging off the back of our heads. According to the nuns, it was imperative that we wear this folded up kleenex to show respect or God would force them to punish us. This almost makes sense as my mom cut my hair -and cut and cut and eventually it was sort of even or maybe she just gave up because there wasn't much left in some places. Obviously God couldn't stand how it looked either. Although how that tiny triangle hid any of my hair and disrespect is beyond me.
:)
rosie said it was a hat and so she put it on.
now eric's saying....
WHERE THE HECKS THE TOILET PLUNGER GONE?!!!!
the last part of that caught me off guard. Diet Pepsi through the nose is not a happy feeling.
You have officially made me scared of Catholic school! I guess it IS a little like they portray it in movies :)! You were a cutie in your uniform and uncomfortable hat though!
Catholic school is everything it is portrayed to be in movies and then some. It was fun too, and gives me great blogging material.
Those Nuns kept me in line and out of the prison line-up. Or so they told me . . . daily. :-)
I secretly loved wearing a uniform. The beanie, not so much.
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