The butterflies in my stomach had made their annual visit. It was the first day of school after a summer camping in New Jersey and the Bronx with my aunt and cousins.

The oppression of a Catholic school education was always tough to return to after a summer spent outdoors. Like a Marine returning from extended leave, I would now have to conform to life on base.  

The sneakers, T-shirt, and dungarees of summer would be exchanged for the Saint Monica’s uniform. White dress shirt, cleaned and pressed at the Chinese laundry. The collar so stiff that a noose would have been more comfortable. And a dark gray tie with the yellow embroidered SMS logo. I always had to tie the damn thing a few times before I got the length right.

My shoes—black leather, strap across the front with a big silver buckle on the side—were Thom McAn’s. The shoe was a great selection for New York in 1970. The flat soles made it easy to clean the dog shit off, this was pre-pooper-scooper law. 80th Street, home to Saint Monica, was infamous for dog shit. The gray pants that I wore were sharply creased. I would go through numerous pairs during the year because of recess games of red-rover, dodgeball, and ringalario. It may have been ringolevio in other parts of the city, but in Yorkville it was ringalario.

Early morning and the apartment is empty. Dad at work, Ma having coffee at a neighbor’s, my brother on a bus to Harlem to Rice High School and his own nightmare, and my older sister off to work. After a breakfast of Cap’n Crunch and Wonder Bread, I have a few minutes to relax and turn on the TV. Not much of a choice:  the Today Show, news, or the worst cartoon ever, Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse. I especially hate it because at the end of the show, it’s time to head to school. I grab my green blazer and head out the door. 

It’s a short walk to school. I live on 81st between York and 1st Avenue. Saint Monica’s is just one block south. Not much time to daydream or wander. In front of the school there’s not much activity, just a few parents with their young lambs ready for first grade. I wait until the last minute to get to school. It’s a benefit of living around the corner. Passing the convent, I see the life-size concrete statue of Saint Monica. Her face has a welcoming serene expression,

The principal, we will call her Sister Torquemada, stands at the top of the main entrance chatting pleasantly with some parents. Sister’s complexion is a nice peach tone, but this is just a show for the parents. As soon as the doors are closed and the parents gone, Sister’s complexion turns crimson red. She does have a tough job, there are only three other nuns at the school, the rest are lay teachers, So, Sister must make up for the brutality that is lacking due to the scarcity of nuns. She has a tremendous open hand left and a powerful right cross. All the boys in my class can attest to that.

In the building there’s a smell, a putrid odor, of liverwurst, industrial sized cans of soup, and whatever other rot that is served for lunch.

The only information I have for this first day is from the standard letter sent out before school. Classroom number and teachers’ name. It’s a new teacher, Miss Comito. I have hope, she’s a lay teacher.  

On my way up to the third floor, I can hear my class already; we were a loud bunch. The boys outnumbered the girls two to one in a class of almost forty and plenty of them were class clowns.  

Entering the room, I can feel the energy . There she was, the new teacher. This had to be a joke by Sister Torquemada. She was tall, thin, dark and gorgeous! It was like seeing the Pieta at the 1964 World’s Fair, except this beauty was in the flesh not marble.  

A group of boys are gathered around Ms. Comito, making feeble sixth grade attempts to impress her. She turns to me and says, “Good morning. Take a seat anywhere.”  Anywhere? I can’t be given that responsibility. She must be an anarchist.  

I head to my friends, Paul, Joey, and Pat. We look at each other, no words are spoken, but we know exactly what each one of us is thinking.

Miss Comito! What a distraction she was. All the boys wanted her attention, and the girls wanted to be like her. Shortly after the school year began, some of the girls even started to mimic her appearance, wearing their hair in a bun and hiking up their gray and green tartan skirts. Sexual awareness had collectively socked a group of 12-year-old Catholic school kids right in the jaw. 

Miss Comito had teaching methods contrary to the ones we had been weaned on. Just out of college, she applied the progressive education techniques still fresh in her mind. It was going to be a disaster. We were like rodeo bulls kept in the shoot for five years. Suddenly, someone had opened the gate. The only way a sixth-grade boy knew how to get attention from the opposite sex was to act like a fool, and many of us applied this tactic with Miss Comito.  

We didn’t learn much that year, but it was fun. It was the first time in six years that I looked forward to going to school. She let us work in groups of our choosing. My group was Patrick, Joey, Paul, Pat, and me. Yes, there were four kids named Patrick in my class. This was Irish New York. The attendance sheets looked like a list of Sinn Fein politicians. My group, except for Patrick, learned nothing in math. But Patrick was like a human calculator, and we just copied his work.

Miss Comito took us on after-school trips in small groups. It was our choice as to who we would go with and where. My group chose the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We were ecstatic. It was our first date with Miss Comito. Dinner and the museum. We stopped at the hot dog cart on the corner of 80th and 1st Avenue. I had my usual hot dog with onions and an ice-cold orange-aid. We made a lovely couple, well sextet. Our teacher was in her usual hippie wardrobe: blue crocheted hat with pom-pom slightly cocked to the side and a fur coat just a tad bit longer than her micro-mini skirt.  I imagined her naked under the coat. And the five boys in our green blazers, gray pants and polished leather shoes. We made such a contrast to her hippie wardrobe and looked like a group of very young Republicans on our way to a Nixon rally. 

 Walking to the museum, our conversation was deep. We wanted to know all about Miss. Comito and peppered her with questions. She was open and honest, not that sixth graders would be brave enough to ask the questions really on their mind. That would come later. She was from the Bronx, her parents were from Sicily, and people often mistook her for an Arab or Puerto Rican. This was her first job, she had gone to NYU. We interrogated her all afternoon.

Back at school, we settled into our new routine, learning nothing and fawning over Miss Comito. Sister Torquemada would pop in her crimson head periodically, reminding us we were still prisoners of the Stalag. One night we made our escape, for a while anyway. The school was on fire. The phone rang, mom picked up and heard the news. We all raced around the block. Flames were shooting out of the windows, lighting up the street. We would have an unscheduled vacation. 

After a week of no school, a plan was put into action. We would be sent to the other Catholic schools in the area while Saint Monica’s was renovated. Our destination, along with that of the fifth grade, would be Saint Catherine’s on 68th Street. After meeting in the church and a few stern words from Sister Torquemada, we headed out. Our class lined up single file in a straight line, like Marines on parade, with Miss Comito leading the way. All this was a ruse for Sister. As soon as we were out of her view, the line dissolved into anarchy. 

We were placed in the auditorium at Saint Catherine’s. Because of some friction between the Saint Monica and Saint Catherine students, the auditorium would become our solitary confinement. Sequestered in there, we were only let out into the general population for lunch. After a meal of half inch thick slices of bologna on white bread with mayo, soggy string beans, and dessert of a block of vanilla flavored Crisco that was supposed to pass as ice cream, we would return to the auditorium.   

Recess in the auditorium was a free for all, at least for the boys. A ball of crumbled paper wrapped in masking tape would serve as a ball for a rough game of keep-away. There were no teams. If you were unlucky enough, or just plain stupid, to have the ball, you were tackled. Miss Comito would not interrupt the game. She was letting us blow off steam and hoping to have us exhausted. The girls would play patty-cake, smacking and clapping their hands along with a song about mothers, marriage, and babies. Double Dutch and hopscotch were their other go to games. 

Miss Comito had her hands full. I don’t think they taught a class in NYU on how to control the sexual urges of repressed six grade Catholic school boys. But she figured out what was going on with us. One day she told us that she would be bringing in a male friend of hers and that the boys would split off with him while she would be with the girls. We could talk about anything that was on our mind. It was a 1970 hippie bull session. I’m sure she didn’t run this by Torquemada. 

When the day came, her friend was oozing with attitude. But how else can you deal with 27 little shitheads? The two groups split up, girls with Miss Comito, boys with Mr. Cool. It started with small talk, blah blah blah, nothing of interest.

Then he said, “You guys can ask me about anything; sex, girls, anything.” So, the questions started rolling off our golden tongues, but there was one subject that was of paramount interest: Miss Comito. Our questions were innocent at first, nothing of substance, until Flanagan asked, “You think she ever did it before?” Mr. Cool was not shaken. He answered the question. “She’s a beautiful modern young woman, yes, she probably did.” The answered question meant that we all now had a shot…a shot at what, we had no clue.

After a couple of months, we were back at Saint Monica’s and our normal routine. The boys continuing to act like fools and vying for Miss Comito’s attention. Sister Torquemada, doing her best to control us, frequently popping in to check on us.

This would be Miss Comito’s first and last year at the school. I would like to imagine that she ended up in Milan, got a job as a model and had affairs with all the big time Italian names, Fellini, Ponti, Mastriani, Giannini, etc. It was my favorite year at St. Monica’s.

photo: St. Monica, Grade 6 class photo, 1970-71, with Miss Comito on the far right.

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Joseph Samuels is retired. His Irish ancestry has passed on to him the gift of storytelling. So, at his wife’s insistence, he now writes his stories down. He believes it was her way of just getting him to shut up.