Can’t really blame the Jesuits.  Poor things.  After all, they have to take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.  So: no money, no sex, no backtalk.  It’s enough to make any man snap.  The first two vows thwart the things which drive 99% of all human activity, and the third asks you not to be grouchy about it. 

(I know you’re rolling your eyes at the chastity thing, but for the record, I know of only one priest from my high school who got sent up for molesting boys – and it wasn’t at school – he conducted “summer spiritual retreats.”  Just like summer camp, only with lots of praying and scarring sexual conduct instead of s’mores). 

So what did the poor Fathers have? 

Booze and sadism. 

I never saw the president of our school, a fundraising powerhouse named Father Coughlin, sober.  The man’s gin blossomed nose made W.C. Fields’ schnaz look as petite as the King of Pop’s, but he knew what he was doing: one year his drunken back slapping efforts got us a brand new state of the art blue polyurethane track.

On the sadism front, Father Cosetti, a mustachioed, bespectacled man with a thick Italian accent and linebacker’s build, would walk up and down the aisles during tests and say “Shut up or I beat you with my stick.”  And he did.  He beat us with his stick.  I think it was just a yard-long ruler, but in those beefy mitts of his, you felt it. 

And sometimes he would just randomly rap you on the top of your hand whether you were talking or not, just to remind you, I suppose, that life could be capricious and unfair.  That, or he was getting his freaky-deaky jollies.

But when you got detention, well, that’s when the Jesuits got creative.  At Loyola High detention wasn’t called “detention.”  It was called JUG. 

Jurisdiction Under God. 

No rulers involved, in fact, no physical brutality of any kind.  Just a little writing. 

All (1) you (2)  had (3) to (4) do (5) was (6) write (7) a (8) thousand (9) word (10) essay (11) on (12) why (13) you (14) had (15)  to (16) write (17) a (18) thousand (19) word (20) essay (21), why (22) it (23) wasn’t (24) going (25) to (26) happen (27) again (28), and (29) you (30) had (31) to (32) number (33) each (34) word (35).

By word 100, I was longing for Father Cosetti’s stick… 

(For the record, I only got detention once.  I say this with no pride – a young man should show a few more flashes of rebellion than I did.  Plus my one infraction was utterly pathetic: I hadn’t been caught smoking weed, drinking under the bleachers or even dropping F-bombs in class.  No, I had arrived late one morning, and even that wasn’t my fault.  Kenny Miller was late picking us up for carpool.  Sigh.  Just call me Alfredo “Che” Botello).