Columbus Day

Yesterday was Columbus Day.  It made little impression on most of you, unless of course you are Canadian, because it was Thanksgiving Day.  For the rest of us it was work as usual, or whatever usual is in Covid times.  Not so when I was a little boy in Catholic School in the Bronx.  Columbus Day was a day off from school.  I was made for play and treats, not learning.  So I loved Columbus as did my schoolmates.  The nuns got the day off too so they could pray more and be quiet in their semi-cloistered life.  And not be bothered by a class of 65 hoodlum-to-be-boys.  The best thing about Catholic school was the days off.  Public schools were in session.  So we Papists got the parks and ball-fields to ourselves.  Plus, we got out early one afternoon a week so that our classrooms could be used by the Catholics in public school for their catechism.  Of course, they had little chance of going straight to heaven, what little catechism they learned.  Well, the Catholic church is struggling now, but that is what it gets for relying on kids like me to be the future.  And New York City had parades too!  There was a Columbus Day parade so I guess a lot of adult Catholics were off too so they could march.  It was all so much fun before the historians revisited Christopher and he has taken a big hit in the last few years.  And for Catholic kids, it is just another day at school.