Status Asthmaticus - going back a little ways....

Alright, folks, set your Time Machines for a little trip back to 1989. It was a momentous year in the world, and it was the beginning of a life-changing year for one little boy in Wichita, Kansas.

What happened, you ask? I entered fourth grade at Blessed Sacrament School in the fall of 1989, when I was ten years old. As many of you may already know, I didn't exactly have the best of times at Blessed Sacrament, but this story requires the telling again, at least briefly. (Me? Brief? Well, we'll see.)

I had started school at Blessed Sacrament in the fall of 1986, entering the first grade class of Sister Connie. I remember first grade well, as my less-than-ideal introduction to Catholic parochial education, the beginning of a downward journey that ended in the late winter of 1990 in tears, rage, and frustration. Basically, I was a Weird Kid. You see, to be a normal little boy at Blessed Sacrament in the 1980s, you had to conform to certain standards. You had to play soccer. You had to be in the Cub Scouts. You had to eventually become an altar boy. You had to cordially loathe singing at Mass because singing was for girls. You had to love slasher horror movies (yes, elementary school kids watching Nightmare on Elm Street.). You had to hate to read because reading, again, was for girls.

I filled two of those requirements, playing soccer and being a Cub Scout. I played my little heart out, as a matter of fact, although my little lungs tended to disagree at times. I joined the Scouts in third grade. We'll get to the altar boy stuff in a moment. But, you see, I loved to sing at Mass; I still do. I sang every song, every sung part of the liturgy, and I loved it. I loved Mass; it was probably my favorite part of Blessed Sacrament School, going to Mass thrice weekly with my classmates in addition to every Sunday. Even then I loved reading, and devoured every book I could get. I hated horror movies.

So, I was Weird, I wasn't Normal, I didn't Fit In. In that school, fitting in was of paramount importance to most everyone. Teachers expected it. Students demanded it. Parents reinforced it. There were just things you did, things everyone else did, that defined who and where you were. Conformity, in fact, and the rigid exclusion of people who did not conform, was the defining characteristic of the school. I never conformed. Oh, I wore the uniform, and I attended and enthusiastically participated in the various religious duties of Catholic schoolkids; this, in fact, was one more thing that set me apart, since while everyone participated, only weird kids actually liked it.

No, I didn't have an altogether happy time there, although there were good moments, and even great ones. First and second grade were in the main fairly good years; I had some friends, and even if the teachers didn't like me and the "cool" boys shunned me, that was okay, because I went on in my own little world. The other world hadn't entirely crashed down on me, yet. Things started going downhill fast when I entered third grade, in 1988. The teacher positively hated me, or so it seemed. Nice and friendly as she was to the "cool" boys and girls, to me and those other non-conformists like me, she was cold, uncaring, and demanding. Also, and of greater impact to this story and the purpose of this entry, the priests at our parish changed.

The former priests, Father Bebak, Father Bieberly and Father Billinger, were great. To a large degree they, especially Father Bebak, made life at Blessed Sacrament bearable, because whereas everyone else seemed to have it in for me, the priests never did. They always listened, they were always there to help me when I needed it; they were gentle, caring hearts who remain, in my mind, the very epitome of what parish priests should be: wise, kind, pious, and charitable. I always felt comfortable with them, safe with them; I loved going over to the rectory, in fact, just to say hello, and they were always happy to see me.

But Blessed Sacrament had the misfortune (as I see it) then as it does now of being the "training" parish for young priests just coming out of seminary. There is usually an older, experienced priest and one or two young priests, assigned by the Diocese to the parish to learn the ropes of parish life. The disadvantage is that the turnover means that a young priest usually isn't assigned to the parish for long enough to really make an impact, they're usually there for about two years. In the late 80s, Father Bieberly was the teacher, so to speak, and the others were young priests there for the training. Fr. Bieberly retired in 1987, replaced by Fr. Eck, and the other two had both left by 1989. For one young boy, the change in parish leadership changed his life.

I was always afraid of Fr. Eck. He wasn't mean or bad or anything, but he was very different than Fr. Bieberly had been; whereas I remember coming to the rectory and seeing Fr. Bieberly sitting in an armchair, wearing a sweater and drinking a beer while watching a football game, with his big floppy dog dozing at his feet, Fr. Eck was just...proper. Formal. Cool. Distant. He was definitely not the kind of priest you could sit down and watch a football game with. He was never cruel or anything like that, but there was no doubt that he was the Pastor, and for us kids, he wasn't your friend; he was a stern father figure, a teacher, a leader. My mother used to impress this on me whenever I'd say a bad word. She'd ask "would you say that in front of Fr. Eck?" And I was always forced to answer no, because I was terrified of what he'd say.

The young priest who replaced Fr. Bebak was named Father H. Setter, and we just called him Father H. Now, Father H. did try to be your friend, but he wasn't my friend. He was the friend of popular, athletic, cool boys, whose wealthy parents had influence in the parish and community. The kind of boys who got good grades, played soccer on actual teams, always got the latest trendy expensive toy for Christmas, and got to go to Hawaii or Vail or France for vacation. He didn't care about poor, dumb, asthmatic kids whose widowed mother, although active in the parish, wasn't one of the impeccably-dressed power-playing moms who ran that little world. Fr. Eck, at least, for all his terrifying sternness, was seemingly aloof from all of that. Father H. lived easily within it.

I never liked Father H. Besides the above, I can't explain why. But, you see, all my life I had wanted to be an altar boy. I was so happy, at the end of third grade, knowing that come the next year I could apply to become one. But, that fall turned out worse than I ever could have imagined. My fourth-grade teacher was simply crazy. She "imprisoned" my inhaler in her locked desk because I had bad grades, and I had to ask permission to use it (ask permission to use my medications!). She had "class meetings" every week to solve "problems," in which all the students in the class would gather around, bring up "problems," and democratically vote on solutions. Before you say "hey, this is a great way to introduce kids to decision-making!" know that it was pretty much a system for institutionalizing bullying. The "problems" consisted of things like "Lauren has a messy desk" while the "solutions" were along the lines of "make Lauren's desk face the wall, in the corner, until she learns to clean her desk." The meetings were used by the cliquish, popular kids (who sadly comprised a majority of the class) to harass and punish the few of us who didn't conform. If they didn't like someone, they'd use the meetings to attack them, and this with the smiling, enthusiastic approval of the teacher, who hated the weird kids every bit as much as the students did. There were other things this teacher did that only compounded the situation. If you were a cool kid, life was great; if you weren't, life was hell.

Fourth grade wore on, and I became more miserable than ever. I had never had good grades at Blessed Sacrament, due to several things, but fourth grade was the worst; I remember, shortly before we left for Christmas break, asking the teacher what I could do to bring my grades up to D standards to avoid being held back at the end of the year; I was making Fs in every subject. I was depressed. During third grade, I had started wandering off by myself at recess to play in the sand, rather than face my male classmates in their endless, violent soccer games, or the prissy, snotty girls who wouldn't come within five feet of me willingly; in fourth grade, I didn't even play in the sand, I just sat there and waited for the day to end. Class itself was an exercise in concentrated futility, as it was apparent that I was probably going to be held back, one of the "stupid kids" who weren't worth the effort of helping. Nobody helped me, or even tried. They merely told me I was wrong, or doing badly, and left it entirely up to me to correct things I was unable to correct. Few people were nice to me. I even stopped enjoying Mass; it became a chore, like everything else related to school. Even the Cub Scouts had lost its appeal, as it became apparent that I would never be a successful Scout and that the popular, cool boys were the ones who the Scoutmasters liked and encouraged. Often, I would come home crying from the day's humiliations.

But the last straw came in March, as the school year was drawing to a close. Fr. H came to the class one day in the middle of winter and said that those boys who wanted could sign up to be altar boys. Here was my chance, I thought! Something I had wanted to do all my life! So, I signed up. Come about a month later, in the middle of March,I came to school in the morning to meet a group of my male classmates, who without preamble assailed me for deserting them. I was completely confused. As they so snottily informed me, I was supposed to have come and helped serve the 6:30 am Mass, learning along the way. I had had no idea. Nobody had told me! It was posted on the bulletin board in the church. There was a schedule, posted two weeks in advance. How was I to know that? No one had said anything about a schedule. No one had said anything, in fact, to me at least, since the day we signed up. But apparently, everyone knew but me. They said Fr. H. was angry.

That was it. I broke down. The last thing I had been looking forward to at that school, the last little spark of hope in an awful year, had been snuffed out before I even knew it was in danger. I stumbled through the rest of the day in a fog of despair. When my mother picked me up from school, I told her that I just couldn't take it anymore, and told her about the altar boy thing, about other things. She had become known as a troublemaker in the parish for opposing my teacher's insane classroom practices, and engendered the animosity of the parish elites as well as the priests. The next day, she pulled me out of Blessed Sacrament, and enrolled me at the local public elementary school. I think a fitting end to the story is how, by the end of May, I had achieved A and B grades in all my classes at Adams, after having been there for only two months. I made tons of friends, had a blast on the playground, was friends with the principal, and liked by my teacher (and I liked her in turn). It was an absolutely 180° change from Blessed Sacrament. The following summer was, in fact, the best of my life up until 2005.

Now you may be asking what the point of this is. Well, I may not have written about it yet, but the Wichita City Council is considering passing a city-wide ban on smoking in all public places. My head may be libertarian, but my lungs are definitely cheering this idea on, as are a majority of citizens. But, as usual, it has caused a firestorm of protest among smokers who think it is their God-given right to endanger other people's health to their hearts' content. Turns out, Father H. Setter is one of those, as detailed in this editorial from today's Wichita Eagle.

I haven't thought about Fr. H. in years. But here he is, seventeen years later, vexing me again, although he doesn't know it.

Some things never change.