The attorneys took us out to lunch today. They are, to use my mother’s favorite descriptor, characters. Today, maybe because one had just been to his 40th high school reunion, or perhaps because public school begins tomorrow, they were reminiscing about the nuns. (Actually, I’m fairly sure it started with a Wal-Mart comment. One of the attorneys said that if he were leading an expedition, and needed pirates, he’d recruit from the camping aisle at Wal-Mart. This statement, naturally enough, led to a discussion of the nun patrol.) Anyhow, they start in with stories of torture at the hands of the nuns: boys grabbed by the throat and dragged before the class to apologize for lying; a girl smacked off her chair; the first-grader hit in the head with a Webster’s dictionary; the beating of a diabetic kid on even days.

And then Jim tells about a recess they were all kept indoors because of rain, and were sent to play in the basement. They stuffed a kid in a box, piled boxes and chairs and other heavy items atop the box, and left the kid there. Later, in their classroom, when they were asked if they’d seen the kid, they all said no. Finally, Bob told about being dumped in a trashcan in the girl’s bathroom by three freshmen girls. He was a 7th grader, and it was the first time he’d ever seen a feminine hygiene dispenser.

Maybe these stories are as close as we come to adventure tales. The old brawling days. The teachers you were forewarned not to push. The ones wielding sticks. The ones who kicked desks, smacked heads, enjoyed humiliation. The ones you weren’t to be alone with. The fact that you learned, early, the tactics of the schoolyard. Learned there was always someone bigger, stronger, more ruthless. That sometimes things just happened from boredom. A rainy day in a basement.