Memories of Catholic School

I only went for 2 years but that was enough for me. My older sisters had been there for 5 years when I first started going so I had to ask them about all the rituals like communion, confession etc... I remember one of my sisters (who was a goody two shoes) showed me a " courtesy ticket " and I asked what it was for and she told me that at the end of the year the school had a carnival and these tickets can buy candy or you can use them to get on the rides. When I asked her how do I get those tickets she said the nuns give them out when you do good deeds. I thought fat chance of me getting any. I watched other kids doing things for the nuns and receiving courtesy tickets for their efforts so I decided to give it a try. I saw a nun coming out of the school carrying a huge book and ran up to her " Can I carry that for you Sister? " she got kind of huffy and said " No I can carry it myself,and stop brown-nosing " I walked away feeling rejected. I found a better way of getting those courtesy tickets. I noticed a brown-noser in my class who was always hanging around the nuns had a pile of courtesy tickets that he hoarded in his Peechee folder under his desk, so I waited for him to dash off to do a good deed then I picked him clean. I used all of his tickets on the rides and I got two rolls of Rollos (Those chocolate covered caramel candies) that ended up melting in my pockets. I forget how many Hail Mary's that crime cost me. Another thing I remember about Catholic school was we never played sports at recess, we fought instead. Not too many punches thrown mostly wrestled to see who was the toughest and the blood really showed up good on those white shirts. I ended up having to go two weeks to a public school for summer because of my grades. It was a brand new school that just opened, everything was clean and painted and I noticed a few others from my Catholic school that were there. One day I was coming out for recess and some big kid shoved me to the ground skinning my knee. He ran away laughing and I tackled him by the playground equipment and was bashing his head on the steps to the slide when some kid yelled " This ain't Catholic school Finn, they don't allow fighting here. " It took a long time to adjust to public schools for me.