Argh! Teh Memories!
Nuns! Reverse!
Conveniently The Ancestral Home was opposite a primary school, so a few months after my 5th birthday I was marched across the road with my bright shiny new bag of coloured pencils and introduced to the slightly scary world of "school".
Enter Sister Mary Cyprian. A bitter, twisted Irish catholic nun with a chip on her shoulder the size of HMS Belfast. She marshelled twenty five of us into a classroom and began calling out names. As had the others I answered when my name was called and was rather surprised to be dragged to the front of the class by my hair, shoved forcefully into a corner and told to stay there in silence until she had time to think of how to deal with me.
For the next half hour the rest of the class had a lesson of some kind, no idea what, whilst I stood in a corner wondering what made me different, and why she hated me for it.
The other children are ushered outside to run around for breaktime. I am told to stay standing in the corner and pray for gods forgivness for my sins.
Having parents who considered god to be an outmoded relic of an obsolete belief system I had no idea what to do.
So asked how you did praying.
I was promptly dragged, screaming by now, being pulled along by your hair really hurts when you're five, to stand in the lunch hall as an example of wickedness for the other pupils.
Fortunately Mr. Keene, the deputy head and excellently sane person was close enough to hear me wailing and stepped in to find out what was happening.
He sat me down in a comfy chair with a book of bright colours and took the penguin off to have a quiet word. Which quickly escalated into the sound of high pitched harpy screaming punctuated with low pitched incredulous bellows.
Some little while later, and still slightly tearful I was gently escorted to a different classroom and introduced to Miss Prichard who was, as I considered it, a very nice lady. She didn't scream or shout when told my name. She gave me a pencil and asked me to write letters one at a time. That was easy.

Reasons ? Well it was almost seven years later before I found out exactly what the hell that and other incidents, including a certain nun with a meter rule and me with two broken fingers, were all about.
Leaving the school and final interviews with Mr. Keene, now headmaster, I finally got to ask him why the nuns hated me so much, why they were prone to flying into fits of rage at the very sound of my voice and basically refusing to actually teach me anything.
He hauled out my school record, a large file in two distict sections , pulled a piece of yellowing paper from the front and handed it to me.
It was the form my parents had filled in to apply for a place at the school. Beutifully headed at the top with the words "St. Albans and St. Stephens Catholic School" and with a little box half way down labeled "Religion". It was completely filled with the word "NONE" writ large in my father's bold handwriting, which had been crossed out several times. Scribbled in beside it, in the same hand as that in the box reserved for the school admittance board the four deadly letters "C of E".

Thirty years ago now, but I still _really_ hate Nuns.
( DukeEuphoria Comes highly reccomended, Mon 14 Nov 2005, 16:40, Reply)