Not Once! Not Even One Time!!

Oh, Sr. Beata, Sr. Beata… I can't  tell you the number of times that I think back to the lessons you taught me and how right you were. Okay, maybe you were a tad off on those constant warnings you delivered on the danger of the Russians infiltrating our country and turning us against our parents and religious beliefs, but after all no one can always bat 1.000.

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My seventh grade Catholic school teacher, Sr. Beata, loved to give us heartfelt warnings on the dangers in the world. On one occasion she touched on the dangers of drugs. Sr. Beata delivered her lessons with dramatic passion, and nowhere was her passion more enlivened than when she was trying to save our souls. She was a small woman, older, I used to think. It's hard for a kid to gauge the age of a nun-in-full-habit, but back then, I took her for around 70+ years of age. I was shocked to meet her more than 22 years later when I was then married with children. She and I had both volunteered to assist a family with a profoundly disabled son. She was no longer in habit, times had changed that. I ran the math in my head. She should now be 92+. But, she looked exactly the same. Maybe there is something about living the good life.

This weekend I recalled Sr. Beata's lecture on the dangers of drugs. I could perfectly picture her, small in stature, standing before us. Her eyes widened, the pitch in her voice changing from whisper to a near shout as she raised an arthritic finger at us and wagged it before our eyes, "I warn you!..." Because of her full habit we couldn't see her neck, but I just bet the veins in her neck were bulging. "Heroin… euphoria… withdrawal..." were some of the words I heard that day. I don't remember much else, except that, as she finished, her face became somber and her voice again softened as she said, quietly but earnestly, "Young people, not much older than you, have died because of drug use. Nothing can be done to change that. It's too late for them. For to be an heroin addict is to be imprisoned until that prison eventually entombs you. But, you, you have a choice… Don't try it… NOT EVEN ONE TIME..."

I was flipping through the television channels one day, looking for something that could hold my interest for more than a nanosecond. I came across an episode of NCIS (I think). The staff's director's wife was talking to her children, pre-teens, who were preparing to go somewhere, maybe a party or something? As she kissed them and hugged them she asked, "How many times does it take for something to go wrong when it comes to drug use?" (I'm paraphrasing here, but it was something like that.) The kids rolled their eyes and said in unison, "One time, Mom." Like a drill sergeant she repeats louder, "How many?" They say again, "Just once." Again, even louder "How many?" "Once!" they yell back. She smiles, "Okay, you may go."

I wish every mother and father would warn their children in such manner, each and every time they leave their parents' watchful eye. I wish every kid had Sr. Beata in junior high. I wish Philip Seymour Hoffman and those too-many-to-count people from Pennsylvania, Kentucky, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Hampshire... who've died recently, had that NCIS mom and Sr. Beata in their lives.

***

"yea, though we sang as angels in her ear, she would not hear" 

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It will cling to you like an obsessed lover... just waiting in the dark for that one weak moment…