My OCD School Year

This is a true story, but it's never been told.  Wait, I did tell it to a psychiatrist in 1978 when I was in therapy.  The story is that I had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder during eighth grade at Sacred Heart School -- the Catholic grade school I attended in Manoa, PA.

Catholic grade school was a bitch, but when you're in the middle of it you think it's normal.  I remember the fear I developed in first grade. I was terrified of the nuns.  They could do anything to you for the slightest misstep. I was afraid to ask to go to the bathroom during class because they said kid is supposed to "take care of his needs" outside of class time.  Otherwise, you would have scores of little kids abusing bathroom privileges.  Maybe that's why I shit my pants a couple of times during those years.

The situation got really bad in eighth grade.  My all-male class had a young nun teaching us.  Sister Helen was probably the youngest nun at the school and she wore perfume.  Well, maybe not perfume, but strongly scented soap which must have been sanctioned by the Order of Immaculate Heart nuns.  I recall she would swoop down the narrow aisles of desks and you could close your eyes and tell how close she was by the fragrant smell.  It was during Sister Helen's reign of terror that I developed OCD.

OCD has two components.  Obsession with disturbing thoughts coupled with compulsions that serve to relieve those thoughts.  I only remember the compulsions to tell the truth.  Let me tell you about them.

Sister Helen had us dedicate each piece of school work that we did.  The dedication could be a simple cross at the top center of the page.  Or it could be the initials A.M.D.G. (Latin: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam / English: For the Greater Glory of God).  If you are a true believer, like I was, you could use a combination of the two.

As a good Catholic boy, and a good student, I started dedicating the shit out of my school work.  I would write in ink

on every page.  Then I would see some imperfection, like the M wasn't proper penmanship so I would forcibly erase it and write over it.

Before long each page was both messier due to the erasures, and neater due to the improvements (actually, it was always messier).  Eventually the dedication looked something like this.

Since each assignment had these blotches, Sister Helen noticed.  "Robert, what are you doing?" "Nothing, Sister," I would reply. She would ask again and I couldn't answer because I didn't know why I engaged in this compulsion.

This wasn't my only compulsion.  Before going to bed I would say my nighttime prayers.  In previous years I did this at my bedside, but in eighth grade I started kneeling in a bedroom closet.  I would even kiss the floor as an act of penitence.  My father caught me once and demanded an explanation.  Since I didn't know why I was doing what I was doing, I told him I was just praying.

All of this seemed to me, a 13-year-old kid, like a bearable cross.  Then, one day, I crossed a line (accidentally though).  I had stayed after school to clean the classroom.  One task was to close the windows which protruded outside the building on triangular hinges.  To do this you used a pole and exerted pressure in the top center of the window frame.  When I did this one of the window panes cracked.

Sister Helen was furious.  She thought I had done this on purpose.  She demanded to see my parents! I pleaded that it was an accident, but she wouldn't have it.  The meeting took place without me and I don't know how it transpired.  My father must have sensed that the good sister was causing me great mental stress and probably told her to back off.  He probably paid for the window too.

That was my eighth grade -- the last year before Catholic high school.  Surprisingly, things got better in high school with male teachers who weren't bent on messing with your mind.  I continued to be an outstanding student and the compulsions just disappeared.

Now the careful reader will ask, "Your compulsions were obvious, but what about the obsessions?"  I don't recall them so much but my therapist (years later) gave an easy explanation.  His view was that I was entering puberty and must have been having sexual thoughts and urges.  Sister Helen was probably at the center of a forbidden fruit scenario.  "Makes sense," I remember saying.

Does telling this story help anyone?  I don't know.  It wasn't cathartic for me, and it probably just amused you.  But I can look back on my 13-year-old self and say, "Hey, kid, you survived eighth grade."  And I'll take that as a compliment.