Saturday, November 30, 2013

Hidemi’s Rambling No.496

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The Catholic school I attended had an annual event of a movie viewing. One year, the school selected a movie about Jesus Christ’s life. In the final scene, Jesus looked straight at me, which I mean was straight at the camera, and said, “I am with you always.” That line startled me. For the first time, I realized he was always with me and I was touched by the thought. Tears were rolling down my cheeks. I had a hard time to see the stairs on my way out of the movie theater because of my tears and to hide them from my friends at the same time. I had been exposed to the Christian teachings routinely through a Bible class and a daily morning prayer at school. Yet, I had never thought about it deeply like this before. As a teenager, I had believed that nothing good would ever happen to me in the future and I would have to endure a life in the prison-like world. I had constantly felt lonely and hopeless. But what if Jesus was always beside me? I wondered how helpful it would be! Although I had had numerous bad incidents with nuns at school and been unable to get along well with them, I felt like I understood a fraction of the reason why they became nuns. Imagining being a nun can be much closer to Jesus, I suddenly wanted to be one. I talked about it casually to my best friend and she burst into laughter as she thought it was my new joke. I had told her seriously for days but that was even funnier to her. My decision to be a nun hadn’t changed after one week, and at last I dared to tell my mother about it. She just flatly said, “You’re too curious and tempting about sexual matters to be a nun.” Her remark was right enough for me to come to my senses and think better of it…

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Friday, November 22, 2013

Hidemi’s Rambling No.495

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Back in my Catholic school days, a teacher for home economics was Sister Carmela. I was in her cooking class. I had no interest in cooking at all and all I did during the class was giggling with my friends and washing the dishes. I simply couldn’t take anything in the class seriously. Home making seemed ridiculous to me, and to begin with, I could laugh endlessly when I thought about a sister called Carmela teaching how to make caramel. As I was lazy all the time chatting and giggling, Sister Carmela often had to call my name in front of the class and shush me. She also noticed I hadn’t participated in any cooking but just been doing the dishes. No matter how hard and often she scolded me for my bad attitude, I didn’t obey and kept making other students laugh. Her patience snapped at last and she called me before the principal. In my school, bad students were close to zero and a student was hardly ever called to the principal’s office. The principal was Sister Mary Catherine who reasonably believed I had done something extraordinarily wrong. But she was taken aback when Sister Carmela told her that I had fooled around during the class. She looked at her face with an impression of ‘That’s it?’ After mildly telling me to behave myself, she let me go. Sister Carmela’s punishment didn’t work and my bad behavior continued. I was in her sewing class next year. Again, I slacked and asked my friend to make a skirt for me. Sister Carmela found that out when I turned in the skirt pretending I had sewn it. That snapped her completely. She decided to appeal directly to my parents and called up my mother that evening. Over the phone, she told her at length how bad I had been in her class. She blamed my bad attitude on my mother’s lack of discipline. My mother kept apologizing for a long time, but her tone gradually changed. As Sister Carmela strongly criticized my mother’s way of raising a child, my mother suddenly yelled, “I have no reason to listen to someone who has never married nor had a child!” and hung up violently. I was stunned because it sounded to me the most insulting remark about a sister. She said to me, “Who does she think she is? She has never raised a child herself, and yet looks down on me who did raise a child. You don’t have to obey such a stuck-up person!” And Sister Carmela stopped complaining about my behavior ever since…

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Friday, November 15, 2013

Hidemi’s Rambling No.494

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Since I became the class clown at school, I was quite popular back then, not only among the students but also among the teachers. When I needed to see a teacher at the hallway in front of the teachers’ office, other teachers would come out of the office to talk with me. They would stand in a circle around me and laugh at my jokes and stories. Inevitably, it was always noisy wherever I showed up. The vice-principal was a stern, rigid teacher called Sister Maris Stella. She was the oldest sister at school and dressed in a traditional, old-fashioned Catholic gown. She was strict to students and teachers alike. Everybody tried to keep away from her because she always reproved someone for something. She would appear wherever people were buzzing, to shut them up. She had recognized that I was often a seismic center of the buzz and given me a look of ‘You again’. Every time the teachers were cracking up with me in front of the teachers’ office, she poked her long-veiled head out of the office. That was a signal for the end of the show. Teachers would disperse quickly while I stopped talking. Sometimes we failed to notice her and she stood behind the circle listening to me. The moment someone spotted her, they would walk away. In those cases, she would ask me what I was talking about. I would apologize and leave. And one thought occurred to me. She didn’t come out to reprove us. She might want to join us. Even after I realized that, I had no way to keep talking once other teachers ran away. As a result, we just kept leaving when she came up. And one day, when we were scattering at the sight of her as usual, she grabbed my arm. She said to me, “That’s it! You hate me, don’t you? I know you hate me! I know, because I hate you too!” Over her shoulder was a statue of the Virgin Mary with a plaque saying ‘Love and Humanity’. It was the most inconsistent scene I had ever experienced. Months later, there came a general-school-cleaning day. I was unlucky enough to be assigned to the school cafeteria of which Sister Maris Stella took charge. As if she got a golden opportunity, she made a slave of me. She chose the dirtiest floor just for me and made me crawl to clean up thoroughly, yelling “Not enough! Do it over!” repeatedly. I felt her revenge so strongly. Given the hatred and now the revenge, I deepened the mystery of Catholic sisters…

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Friday, November 8, 2013

Hidemi’s Rambling No.493

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As all the people around me professed Buddhism and Shintoism, I had never been exposed to Christianity until I entered junior high school. The junior high I attended was a private Catholic convent school and most teachers were nuns. Since I had never had any contact with nuns before, they were nothing but mysterious to me. They lived together in a convent next to the school and wore a veil. They were called like Sister Catherine or Sister Patricia although they were Japanese. Until I got used to them, I had always wondered about the small basics. Do they have an ordinary Japanese name? Do they really stay single for life? Are they bold under a veil? Yes, yes, and no, I gradually learned the answers. I had studied English quite hard to catch up with other students who came from the same convent’s elementary school that gave them a head start in English education. One teacher, called Sister Judith, happened to know that and kindly found a pen pal for me. While students mostly didn’t like sisters, she was an exception. She was popular because she was friendly and beautiful. Students also respected her since she graduated from one of the most renowned universities in Japan and was the smartest sister at school. The school had the very rigid rules for uniform. If an irregular bag was spotted, it would be confiscated. I carried my personal small bag into school one day in addition to the big uniform bag, and Sister Judith caught me. She said she had to confiscate it and I begged her not to. I promised her I wouldn’t use it for school ever again. She decided to overlook my breach for once out of consideration for my emotional plea. As a stupid teenager, I was defiant to pretty much everything. I believed nothing good existed in this world. So I took my irregular bag out of my uniform bag again as soon as I passed through the school gate after school that day. I was walking toward the bus stop with the bag dangling. Someone called out my name from behind. It was Sister Judith. She didn’t return to the convent as usual and left for an errand on that particular day. She didn’t confiscate my bag, though. Instead, she was crying. “I trusted you and that was why I let you go. But you betrayed my trust. I’m bitterly disappointed in you,” she said quietly and walked away. I felt it was much better that she yelled at me and took away my bag…

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Friday, November 1, 2013

Hidemi’s Rambling No.492

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The administration of my apartment is stingy. All the communal areas in the building are dim because they try to keep the light off as much as possible. The decorative indirect lighting at the lobby is always off. The light at the gym didn’t come on until sundown. I exercise in the morning almost in the dark when it’s bad weather. They had plucked off light bulbs one by one from the locker room of the spa, and it’s only half-lit now even though all the switches are on. The air conditioner there is turned off and a small electric fan is the only recourse in the summertime. The building’s communal TV antenna is too old to receive all channels. I’ve been unable to watch some new channels and complained to the administration about it for over a year, but they wouldn’t replace it with a new one. Finally, the light of the fire escape has been turned off since sensors were introduced a couple of months ago. This apartment has the fire escape inside the building that is also for a regular use. I prefer stairs to an elevator and use them every day. But now the whole staircase is in complete darkness when I open an exit door on the hallway. There is a time lag between the sensor and the light. Two steps forward are needed to have the sensor on and then it’s a long time before the fluorescent light comes on. By the time the light is on, I come down half the floor groping in the darkness. I’m certain people are tumbling down in case of an emergency. There was an annual fire drill the other day. The whole light of the fire escape was turned on beforehand for the drill. It’s meaningless to turn the emergency light on only for the very day of drill. I suspect that the administration know they infringe the fire law. I myself am stingy and my own apartment is dim all the time. But when an object to which I pay money is stingy, I can’t stop my endless complains. Meanwhile, I recall that one of the reasons I chose this apartment was a low monthly maintenance fee. If the administration requires a higher fee in exchange for full lighting, I may well ask them to turn off the light…

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