St. Mary's

Saint Mary's School is still located in Palmdale, California. Palmdale sits on the southern border of the Mojave Desert on the northern edge of the San Andreas Fault and the San Gabriel Mountains, about 30 miles north of Los Angeles. It takes about 30 to 45 minutes to drive from Palmdale to LA, but the two places are light-years away from each other as far as civilization is concerned. LA has transit, freeways, interconnectivity between surrounding cities, movies, amusement parks, observatories, universities, and tons of wonderful restaurants. The Mojave has a lot of desert between the communities that dot the landscape, not many means of interconnectivity, a college, not a university, not a lot of restaurants, but the desert spreading between the small towns is spectacular. I wound up in St. Mary's school in 4th grade.

I had attended Lancaster Christian School, which closed down in 2006, from 1st through 3rd grades. It was then that my mom and sister, after having spent a lot of time with Benedictine monks at an abbey, perched in the hills above the desert, decided to become Catholic. Because Lancaster Christian was 20 miles from my home, and St. Mary's was only 10 miles, it seemed a no-brainer for my mom to transfer me to the Catholic school. At the onset of the transfer, I didn't see any problems that could arise. I had a lot of friends at Lancaster Christian, so I was sure I could make a lot of friends at St. Mary's and continue my social and educational steps with little or no problem. I didn't realize how different the two schools were.

My first days at St. Mary's found me having to join in football games during recess. Now, I lived on a ranch my dad owned and raised turkeys on. There were no children my age nearby. I rode horseback around the ranch and desert with my dog. My dad paid me a bounty on sparrows and squirrels that I shot with a pellet gun - the sparrows and squirrels were scavengers at his feed mill and they cost him a pretty penny in lost grain. He paid me 25 cents per squirrel and 5 cents per sparrow. There was nothing related to football in my life, so I had no skills in it whatsoever. No one at St. Mary's understood that I was a horseback hunter and desert rat. I just sucked at football and that was all that mattered.

I also sucked at basketball and baseball, and any other sport that was called for by the nuns to be played by the boys at recess. You couldn't just go and amuse yourself with a book or talk with friends. Sports were a requirement, enjoyed by most of the boys and girls. Now, the girls got to play hopscotch, jump rope, volleyball, and 4-square. I found those activities much more interesting and fun than any of the games the boys were made to play, but not being a girl, I was not allowed to join in. That was my first taste of gender division. At Lancaster Christian, the boys and girls were free to play any game they wanted together. No division, no requirements, play whatever you want and have fun. St. Mary's was rigid and strict.

Another thing I enjoyed doing at home was science. At a very early age, I was given a microscope as a Christmas present and that hooked me in and didn't let me go. Over the course of my growth between about the age of 8 until I was 16 or 17, I went through three microscopes. The first gift was kind of a toy that had no metal or glass parts, it was all plastic including the lenses, but the other two were beautiful scopes made by a company named Perfect. And perfect they were. the first one had an upper magnification of 750x and the second one had a spectacular 900x. The lenses were all made of glass, the focusing mechanisms were beautiful geared pieces of metal art that had two different sets of adjustment knobs, one fast and the other more precise. I spent hours with them. They opened the doors to biology and chemistry for me. I  would bring in squirrels that I had shot and dissect them, learning about muscle structure and the inner organs. We had large toads that made their homes in the small areas my dad had planted with grass out in the front yard. Several of them became victims as well, and dissection happened again and again. Examination of tissues, blood and organs in the microscopes held my interest for hours.

So, I believe it was in 7th grade that we studied biology at St. Mary's. I was totally into it, and our textbook showed a dissected frog and labeled the organs. I approached the teacher, who was not a nun that particular year. I asked her if I could dissect a toad in front of the class and talk about the anatomical structure. She immediately agreed, so the next day I brought my dissecting kit and a toad stowed in a jar full of formaldehyde. There was a podium in the classroom, so I put the dissecting pan up on it so that it faced the class, and dissected the toad, giving a tour to the class regarding the muscles, digestive organs, lungs, and all the other stuff. No one made any gross noises during my presentation, and immediately following, three or four girls came up and asked me questions about the dissection. None of the boys in class made any effort to communicate with me in class. Afterward, while out playing whatever sport we were required to play at the time, several boys came up to me and said how they really hated the grossness of the dissection, while others came up and said things like "You're an idiot" or "That was so f-ing gross I can't believe you'd do that in front of the class." I shook my head and walked away. I was able to find a solitary corner to sit in and not be readily visible to the nuns. I needed some private time.