Next to ballet, darlings, being Catholic is the profession where you learn the most about bodily pain! From the time you can walk, they get after you, scrubbing those stone floors, until your body is pain wracked.
I should know. Because, in the springtime of my youth, which I can barely remember, I was raised at the Convent Of The Sisters Of St. Ursuline, in New Orleans! That's right, darlings! I scrubbed stone floors till my back ached and my fingernails bled! Forget nail polish or softener; honeys, it was never allowed!!!!!!!!!
Of course, this was, and is, the best of all convents! It still is a wild place! Dead nuns flying all over the place, raising havoc, and most likely shocked by the latest styles and fashions--both secular and non! Real nuns, as I can be the first to tell you, don't show their legs or their hair, and the nuns of St. Ursuline, in my day, were the real thing!!!!!!!!!!!
Like the songs says, "How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm?" I did all my required stuff; scrubbing stone floors. prostrating my body on the church floor for hours before Mass, not to mention endless Masses. There was no "Sound Of Music" sung here, dolls!
So, how could I be blamed, if I sneaked out at night, especially since the French Quarter was a stone's throw away! Sometimes I just had to go on those ghost and vampire tours; hell, I would love to run one of them! And the restaurants--how could I pass up Galatoire's, Antoine's, or The Commander's Palace???????? Even a helping of red beans and rice at a Jackson Street dive was contentment enough!!!!!!!! And I was always in bed before the nuns knew I was gone. Or so I thought. A couple of them may have had my number! I occasionally thought I spotted a few of them on the town, too!
It is fortunate I did not pursue a career in ballet. Can you imagine--ballet and being Catholic??????????
Instead of being merely pain wracked, my body would be in traction!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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