“The Holey Robe, Three Women, Two Men and One Nun” a true story by Rochelle Doan Craig

The mid-nineteen fifties were the best of times and the worst of times for me.

My French Language Professor, Dr. X’s voice was as gruff as his appearance. He looked beyond retirement age. Maybe the university couldn’t find anyone both qualified and pompous enough to replace him.

There was nothing casual about him. He always wore his long black professor’s robe, giving the impression that he was going to bless us or more likely curse us. He was just a language prof, for heaven’s sake, not a Catholic Theology professor.

His mortarboard hat, firmly clamped onto his grey, wire-haired-terrier protruding hair, was pushed down hard enough to defy Stalin’s army to dislodge it. Its tassel dangled like a limp donkey’s tail. The point of the cap pressed down into his forehead making him resemble an ape, or at the very least, the comedian, Jerry Lewis.

Weren’t you supposed to give those hats back right after graduation, or pay a penalty?

His shaggy, grey eyebrows sprang out and overhung his eyes, like frost-bitten ivy, drooping down from the top of a craggy wall.

His mustache, like a small grey, prickly porcupine clinging to his upper lip, was stained orangey-brown on one side, just above where his pipe was usually attached. 

Professor Dr. X. had reluctantly allowed me into his second year Honours French class, but really didn’t want me there. I had transferred over from an obviously plebeian, Executive Secretarial Science major. To him I was like a hobo crashing an elite wedding banquet at the nearby, exclusive, private, London Hunt Club.

I had not had the pleasure of “enjoying” Year One of his Honours class, so I was an interloper.

The other class members, three women, two men and a nun, had been with him the year before, were at least a year ahead of me in knowledge, and were serious Honours Students. And they were all a year or two older than I, not counting the nun who was of indeterminate age. The sister wore the whole nun regalia for that time: sensible black oxford shoes, opaque black stockings, the long black habit with the white wimple and the de rigueur rosary and cross.

Prof Dr. X took every chance to belittle me and nit-pick my mistakes, which were admittedly extensive.

My worst sin was not signing up for his Summer Language course which was complete immersion into the language and culture of another province, Quebec, which was over 800 miles (@1200 kilometres) away. Apparently, everyone who was serious about that second language (and also wanted to please him), attended. The nun?  Who knows?

I didn’t have the money, and I had to work in the summer tobacco harvest to help finance my next year of university.

One particular day the prof came sweeping into the classroom, wearing his usual, professorial black robe, the tail of which, like a train caboose, almost derailed itself, trying to evade the slamming door. 

Then, I noticed something. A bit of his robe’s hem had detached from the main body of the fabric, and had created a hole. 

If it were my robe, and I could afford to buy my own stapler, I could’ve temporarily repaired it with a few staples. But I said nothing.

 When he lifted his chair to position it at his desk, he unknowingly shoved one leg of the chair through the hole in his hem. As he turned to write something on the blackboard, the entrapped chair jerked and clattered along behind him, like tin cans tied to newly-weds’ honeymoon car. In owl-like manner, he swivelled his head to see who was causing that racket, suspecting you-know-who.

Trying so hard not to burst out laughing, I almost ruptured my own appendix.

Once, when I had a paper to hand in, on approaching him, he thrust his left hand out to me. Thinking that it must be some kind of strange, French handshake, or perhaps a gesture that he wanted to act more kindly toward me, I put out my left hand and shook his left one too.

Prof Dr. X. jerked his hand away from me in disgust and snarled, “Miss D., I merely wanted that paper you’re holding.”

Later, to get in my own digs at him, whenever he assigned us an unscheduled, Saturday morning class, I would come to class with my hair in rollers and pin curls, partially covered by a kerchief, my fuzzy slippers overlapping my clumpy galoshes, and with my bright green pajama cuffs rolled up, but clearly visible.

What was his motive for assigning those Saturday morning classes? Was it to deny us out-of-towners the chance to go home for the weekend; or make us miss some fun campus activity; or to make sure we stayed sober the night before?

That Christmas and New Year’s break, he announced that he would hold the first class of the New Year on a Friday, not delaying it till Monday. No one else was having classes that day. But I didn’t dare miss it or he’d be riding me even harder for the rest of the year. So, I cut short my family holiday time, and showed up in class in my highly visible, brand new, bright neon pink pajamas. The only other attendee was the nun, who lived nearby, and apparently, had nothing better to do.

In the end, he gave me a decent mark, probably hoping to get rid of me, but I came back the next year to have another go at him.

Also, I do believe that I have the dubious distinction of having personally, started that slovenly trend of wearing pajama bottoms, instead of pants in public, which has finally become fashionable decades after that 1955-56 academic year.

Would I have been on TikTok if it had existed back then?

If so, I would’ve owed my fame to Professor Dr. X and his holey robe.

***

Rochelle Doan Craig is an unrecognized (and rightly so) artist, failed writer with a garage full of her own books, much maligned, burned-out teacher, wife,  travel-wisher, pet-liker and tough love (before the term was invented) mother of six (three of each kind), grandmother of sixteen, and great-grandmother of two, with four more due in weeks.

Rochelle is also the author of The Twelve Years of Christmas, a memoir available from Amazon here.

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