When I was 15 years old, my adolescent world was shaken like an outhouse in a tornado. No, it wasn’t a pimply case of acne, a D grade in geometry, or getting that event-of-the-month cramps just in time to miss the Shamrocks’ 1947 basketball championship game against Podunk Center’s Basket-Brawlers team (or whatever their name was). It was even more tragic than any of those potential catastrophes.

The disaster befell me one spring day of my sophomore year at St. Patrick’s School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, – the only school I had ever attended. One afternoon, I had just got home and was dropping my books on the dining room table so I could sneak out and go bike riding and chase boys with my friend Louise, when my mother hurried into the room. She was all excited!

“Patricia!”, she said, “Mount Mercy Academy wants you to attend their school on a scholarship!” I will always remember those fateful words as the equivalent of letting me know I had just been offered a free luxury cruise on the Titanic.

Of course, at first, it seemed like my Nordic mother must have been making a joke, but as anybody who has grown up amongst Norwegians can probably advise you, Scandinavian humor is a myth. No, Mother was tingling with excitement, but, as usual, she was serious. As in dead serious. As in “better get ready for a devastating fatality” serious.

At first, I was dazed with shock. I was speechless. Mother raved on joyfully about her wonderful news. Aghast, I finally bleated, “But, Mama, that’s not my school. St. Pat’s is my school!”

“But now Mount Mercy will be!” Mother raved on. “And what an opportunity for you!”

“No, no, Mama!” I begged. “What about my friends? I can’t leave my friends! What would I do without my friends?”

“But you’ll make NEW friends!” she extolled. “You’ll see!”

“I don’t WANT new friends!” I screamed. “And Mount Mercy Academy is a girls’ school. Rich girls go there! Snooty rich girls! They wouldn’t even want me there, Mama!”

But my mother wasn’t listening! Her decision was set like cement. The rest of that day – and for weeks that followed – I begged, pleaded, cajoled, implored, threatened suicide, threw myself on her mercy, but to no avail.

And so commenced the bleakest spring and summer of my life. I cried, wailed, wept, sobbed till I was dehydrated. Louise and my other friends wept for me, too, and, in pity, they’d try to comfort me by reminding me, “But Patty, at least you won’t have to wear school uniforms anymore.”

For weeks, I haunted St. Patrick’s Church at daily Mass, the Stations of the Cross, Confession, – praying rosaries, novenas, and making wild hints to God that, yes, I would certainly consider entering the convent if only He wouldn’t take me from my beloved St. Pat’s to face a life of bleak and utter social ruination at an institution for snobby, spoiled rich girls who would have nothing but sneers for their new fellow classmate – completely disrespecting her jitterbug skills or the all-time Dubble Bubble gum chewing championship she had once achieved in ninth grade.

(Note: I’m just kidding about that last part. No girls ever chewed gum while attending St. Pat’s, for a very good reason. The Sisters had a policy of forcing any boy chewing gum in school to wear the whole wad of it on his nose for the rest of the school day. The nuns could always figure out creative, effective ways to administer discipline.)

Finally, the dreaded September morning came when I had to walk to the bus stop to await the bus that would take me to my first dreadful day at the fearsome gothic building on the hill which I had come to think of as Mount Merciless Academy.

On entering the building, I was on guard. Nuns and girls were all over the place, but nobody seemed very hoity-toity. They were, in fact, all smiles. Like they were happy to see each other and to be back for the new school year. And they acted like they were glad to meet the new girl – who was me! It seemed very suspicious. What was going on here?

As the day went on, it was clear that every corridor, office, and classroom, was teeming with new academic year excitement. Even the nuns seemed giddy. As for me, personally, it was beginning to feel like as far as my new fellow students were concerned, I was a prized catch who had just been added to their A-team lineup. Honest! That’s exactly what it felt like.

When the school day ended, I walked to the bus stop and tried to figure out what had just happened. Had I actually attended a day at the new school – AND LIKED IT? No, couldn’t have. No way. Not possible.

When I got home, my mother was waiting for me, excited and nervous. “Patricia, how did you do? How was it? What was it like? And did you like it?” “Well”, I stammered cautiously, “It seemed kind of nice.”

And so began my four years at Mount Mercy Academy – my junior and senior years of high school and two years of junior college on the same campus. I have to say, they were the best four years of education I ever had – before or since – and I still treasure the memory of them, and silently thank my mother for making me face the earthshaking experience of facing those alien classrooms; the teachers who gave me confidence and the thirst to excel; and the other girls who were to win forever my affection and respect.

In case you’re wondering what I learned from all my changing-schools teen-aged angst, it boils down this:

1. Put girls to study together alone in an academic setting – without the competition for the attention of boys – and just watch what happens! You might be surprised. I know I was!
2. Not having to wear school uniforms isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, kiddo, especially in the days when everything you need to wear for the next school day needs to be IRONED!
3. I never liked chewing gum anyway. It always gave me canker sores.