Sister Mary Christopher, our Principal at Our Lady of Perpetual Motion, was a 6’4’’ basketball three-point shooter before the Lord drafted her as a star player for the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother. As Principal, Sister Christopher’s duties included investigating, adjudicating, and punishing playground crimes. She cherry-picked penances like loss of recess, scrubbing messy blackboards, and clapping dusty erasers for most offenders. However, if a kid seemed cursed with sloppy penmanship, she’d lean pedagogical, making the criminal disavow the crime by writing “I will not do [insert crime here]” 100 times in well-formed cursive. However, for savvy repeat offenders like my brother John, Sister Christopher dispensed her most extreme penalty – the 500-word essay.
With the 500-word essay, Sister Christopher hoped to ignite remorse while channeling the wit and insight of John’s storytelling. His repentance? Questionable. However, he stretched best, doing his best because she reveled in his gift.
Sister Christopher taught middle school English with my brother as one of her prize students. And like most citizens of Our Lady of Perpetual Motion, Sister fell under the spell of what today, we call the graphic novel. Everything John ever wrote emerged in this comic strip format.
John honed his craft by blowing his allowance on comic books, Superman, Mad Magazine, and Bazooka Bubble Gum. Bazooka inspired John’s colorful tiny story format while offering amazing deals on plot-enhancing magic rings, hypnotic spinners, glow-in-the-dark cursed ancient coins, and “how to turn stuff invisible” spells – all for a mere five cents.
An early adapter of Sci-Fi, John’s plots were packed with earth-invading aliens and middle school superheroes. The cartoon characters appeared with expressive dialogue bubbles above their heads, while the narrator’s voice emerged below the cartoon frame.
Sister fell for John’s Giger counter-detection of B.S. tinged with cultural critique—like outing racism on Saturday morning TV—with a cartoon strip essay pinpointing the fact that the Lone Ranger was not “alone” and highlighting the myriad ways this Ranger would be a “Lost Ranger” if it were not for the map-reading skills and gut instincts of Tonto, his loyal sidekick. Sister Christopher tacked the Tonto essay at the top of her language arts bulletin board, where it remained for a year.
According to my mother, Sister Christopher’s soft spot for my brother may have been due to the fact that John was the star pitcher on Sister’s inter-Parrish baseball team or maybe because he was the only kid in school who occasionally beat her in a playground game of HORSE. But most of all, Mom believed Sister’s testimony that John’s essays opened her eyes, shook up her conscience, and stole her heart—but only if she listened.
My brother designed a trademark closer for his work. Instead of the pedestrian “The End,” John constructed a sign-off phrase from his favorite Latin adverbs fueled by the bad-boy potty-mouth humor still trending in schools today. He formed his closer phrase from three Latin words: Ubi (where), Sub (under), and Semper (always). When strung together, these adverbs formed his mantra closer: “Semper Ubi, Sub Ubi.” English translation: “Always where under where.”
John closed all graphic stories with Semper Ubi, Sub Ubi and often used the phrase when ending conversations with adults – like at neighborhood parties. To end a chat, he’d fold his hands reverently, bow his head, and whisper, “Semper Ubi, Sub Ubi.” This tickled adults in the know, while those lacking a Latin background mistakenly pegged him as reverent – perhaps on his way to the priesthood.
What did Sister Christopher do whenever John ‘Semper-Ubi-Sub-Ubi-ed’ her? She’d laugh. For her, using Latin was never a crime.
John pitched softballs in playground games of catch, which worked well in the fall and spring, but during the winter, John preferred to hurl snowballs. One November, an early Wisconsin blizzard blanketed our playground with 10 inches of perfect packing snow. John promptly organized the middle school boys into teams. They crammed their forts with snowballs, sending them flying in a ferocious war.
One not-so-gifted snowballer nearly brained the nun on playground duty, and John, identified as the ring leader, was sent to Sister Christopher for sentencing.
Sister rolled her enormous brown eyes; John blinked his baby blues. Unmoved, Sister handed John a Blue Book with this 500-word essay prompt, “Why I Should Not Throw Snowballs on the Playground.” My brother set to work re-titling the assignment, “Don’t Wack a Nun in the Head with a Snowball.”
One chilly afternoon before Thanksgiving, our mother, president of the Christian Mother’s Society, finished assembling food baskets for the needy and slipped into the chapel to light a vigil candle. There, she spotted Sister Christopher having what appeared to be a full-body seizure.
It was Sister Christopher’s ritual to park at the side altar devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary and peacefully correct papers. There, she found the solitude and wisdom to move her red pen under the grace and guidance of Holy Mother Mary. And it was in this exact spot that the apparent medical emergency arose.
To Bernadette’s ever-vigilant eyes, Sister Christopher was either undergoing an epileptic seizure or a massive heart attack. Well-trained in CPR, Bernadette rushed to Sister’s side, finding Sister trembling, hiccupping, and gasping for breath. EMT prepared, Bernadette’s attempt at resuscitation was thwarted by Sister’s enormous palm signaling STOP.
Bernadette took a moment to re-assess Sister’s condition only to find that Sister was, in fact, not dying but seized by fits of hysterical laughter.
With a trembling hand, she passed John’s essay to my mother. Heavy with child, our mom settled in the pew beside Sister and read the essay.
“Don’t Wack a Nun in the Head with a Snowball” was less a contrite cautionary tale and slightly more of a how-to manual. The essay offered the reader a shocking graphic tour of the damage a snowball could do to a specific nun – especially if the kid pitching the snowball had good aim. And as with every other one of John’s essays, it would be the subtext that opened Sister’s heart.
Each cartoon segment of “Don’t Wack a Nun in the Head with a Snowball,” was accompanied by two or three black-and-white cartoon frames accented periodically with red to illustrate blood flow. Every frame included dialogue bubbles and, under the frame, John’s narrative storyline.
In the first frame, a nun stands on the playground between two mounds of snow fashioned into opposing forts. In this picture, a dotted line, like a string of ants, marks the snowball’s trajectory – the route the ball travels to bean the nun.
In the second frame, the snowball smacks the nun. The word “SPLAT” covers the frame, surrounded by flying fragments of snow. The bubble above the nun’s head reads, “Oh no, a flying snowball.”
In the third frame, the snowball dislodged the nun’s veil and wimple. She stands in the frame, bemoaning her stringy, wet hair. The dialogue bubble reads, “Oh, no, kids can see my hair.” The narrative comment below the frame informs the reader, “Now we kids know for sure: Nuns do have hair!”
In the second graphic story, the first two frames remain the same: a nun between two forts – the dotted ant-line – SPLAT – the snowball splatters. In the final frame, a crown of birds circles the nun’s head – her eyeballs rolled inward. The birds’ dialogue bubble reads, “Cuckoo, cuckoo.” The narrative below the frame: “Hit a nun in the temple, she’ll go even more cuckoo.”
The third story begins the same: a nun between forts – sailing snowball – SPLAT. In the final frame, the nun stands, mouth open, with a black space where her front teeth are. On the ground, two white chicklet-looking teeth. Her dialogue bubble reads, “Oh no, that snowball knocked out my two front teeth.” The narrative voice below this frame reassures the reader, “Don’t worry, Sister, my father is a dentist.”
Our father was a dentist.
In the final cautionary tale, there is only one frame. In this frame, a nun lays in a mound of snow, arms and legs out-stretched. This frame contained the darkest warning: “If you have a strong pitching arm, you could hit a Sister – one that you really like – one who shoots baskets and teaches you how to make angels in the snow. That would be a mortal sin.”
John closed this 500-word essay with his signature, ‘Semper Ubi, Sub Ubi.’ Above the last Ubi, he penciled the number 500 in tiny writing.
My mother finished reading, her eyes wet and red; she glanced over at Sister Christopher, who still struggled to suppress spurts of giggles.
“What does this mean?” my mother tapped John’s Latin closer.
Unable to speak, Sister lifted her red pen and wrote the answer on the essay’s cover – “always where under where.”
Bernadette took a beat, shook her head, and surrendered to the powerlessness of parenting my brother. She crossed herself, stood, and made her way to the main altar, where she ignited three rows of vigil lights, dropped several dollars into the donation cup, and left the chapel.
As my mother would tell me later, her deep confessional bond with Sr. Christopher was fueled by near-weekly conferences focused on themes of criminality, creativity, synchronicity, and hilarity. According to my mother, Sister found each John story “prophetically inspirational” when she took the time to listen with her heart. Parked in front of Mother Mary every afternoon, Sister did listen.
Four o’clock to five – her favorite time of the day. One hour of meditative bliss—cocooned in late afternoon shadowy greys, delighted by the dancing reds of vigil lights, and breathing in the fading scent of incense. She’d reach into her pocket, retrieve a small leather pouch, spill the rosary beads onto her lap, and work the circle of rosewood.
In that hour, reconnected with her soul, she’d glimpse the hidden, hear the unspoken, and touch the undone. Guided by meditative awareness and laser focus, she re-read John’s essay, decoding the messages.
It was common knowledge that Sister Martin refused to wear the Order’s modernized veil. Perhaps a beautician—or a perm—could free her to enjoy the more relaxed design.
When Sister Rose Margaret slipped Cook’s watchful eye and wandered the school hallways, rumors of a haunting “cuckoo” nun swirled. It was time for Sister Rose Margaret to receive more advanced care at the Motherhouse.
Sister Helen’s teeth? Sister was long overdue for braces, her teeth resembling toppled dominoes. John’s father was a generous dentist, always up for a hefty donation.
Sister owned the final story. She was the nun who dropped onto her back, flapped her wings, and taught the fifth-grade boys the art of creating angels in the snow.
Sister gave John’s essay an A+.
She handed the treasured composition to my mother at one of their numerous conferences. Sister twinkled, shared how his writing enlightened her leadership, and confessed that she changed her five o’clock closing mantra. She axed the angelic “Amen,” adopting John’s gritty, “Semper Ubi, Sub Ubi.”
My brother John died in April of lymphoma. Thanks to my mother and her insightful relationship with Sister Christopher, we enjoy “Don’t Wack a Nun in the Head with a Snowball” and the backstories that go with it.
MARY-FRANCES SCHNEIDER 