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

 

The mid-nineteen-fifties were the best of times for me because I loved the beautiful, limestone buildings and gentle life on the sprawling green campus of Western U., but also the worst of times because of my poor relationship to my resentful French language professor, Dr. Jenkins. He continually picked on me as the alien in his French class, though possibly for good reason.

Dr. J’s voice, was as gruff as his appearance. He looked beyond retirement age. Maybe the university couldn’t find anyone 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 professor, for heaven’s sake, not a professor of Catholic Theology.

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

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

His eye colour was a moot matter, maybe heterochromian, with two different colours like a Shetland Sheepdog. His shaggy, grey eyebrows sprang out and overhung his eyes, like frost-bitten ivy drooping down from the top of a craggy wall.

His moustache, a small grey, prickly porcupine clinging to his upper lip, was stained orangey-brown on one side just above where his pipe was screwed in.

Professor Dr. J. had reluctantly allowed me into his second year Honours French language class, but really didn’t want me there as I hadn’t been in his first-year class. Shockingly, I’d had the audacity to transfer from an obviously inferior, Executive Secretarial Science major. Not fooled by the title “Science,” to him I was like a hobo crashing an elite wedding dinner at the exclusive, London Hunt and Country Club.

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 outfit for that time: long black habit with the white wimple headgear, opaque black hose, black army-style Oxford boots, and the de reigueur rosary and crucifix.

Prof J. 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 distinct language and culture of another province, Quebec, 1,200 km (800 miles) away. Apparently, everyone who was serious about that second language (and also wanted to please him), attended.

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

One particular day he came sweeping into the classroom, wearing, as usual, his professorial black robe. Its tail almost derailed itself, trying to avoid getting caught in the closing door. Then I noticed something for the first time. A bit of his robe’s hem had pulled away from the main body of the fabric, and had created a hole.

If it was my robe, and I’d had the money to buy my own stapler, I could have temporarily repaired it. I said nothing.

He lifted his chair to position it at his desk, shoving one leg of the chair down through the hole in his hem. As he turned to write on the blackboard, the entrapped chair jerked and clattered along behind him, like tin cans tied to newly-weds’ honeymoon car’s rear bumpers. Owlishly, he swivelled his head backwards to see who was making that racket – suspecting you-know-who.

That sound you didn’t hear, was my gut bursting with repressed laughter.

One time I had a paper to hand in, and as I approached him, Dr. J. thrust his left hand out to me. Thinking that it must be some kind of strange, French handshake and perhaps a gesture that he wanted to be more friendly toward me, I put out my left hand and shook his left one too.

He jerked his hand away from mine in revulsion and snarled, “Miss Doan, I merely wanted that paper you’re holding.”

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

I never understood his motives 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 just to make sure we stayed sober the Friday night before? Or all of the above.

Before Christmas and New Year’s break, he announced that he would hold the first class of the New Year on the Friday morning, not letting it wait 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 time with family and showed up in class in my new, bright neon pink pyjamas. The only other attendee was the nun, who lived on the fringe of the campus, and apparently had nothing better to do. She was not wearing P.J.s.

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

I do believe that I have the dubious distinction of having personally, started that slovenly trend of wearing pyjama bottoms, instead of pants in public, which has become fashionable over the years, since that 1955-56 academic year.

If I’d been on TiK-ToK back then, I’d have owed my fame to Professor Dr. Jenkins and his holey robe.

Rochelle Doan Craig is an unrecognized (and rightly so) artist, failed writer with 144 unsold copies of her self-published memoir, The Twelve Years of Christmas. She’s also a much-maligned, burned-out teacher, rural newspaper contributor, travel-lover, pet-liker and Tough Love (before the term was invented) mother of six (three of each kind), grandmother of sixteen and great-grandmother of 6 1/2. She has taken workshops, retreats and Zoom classes with Brian for ages and is currently wracking her brain for her memoir: The Twice-Lost Son. 

Read more about The Twelve Years of Christmas here.

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