LE MOUCHOIR / THE HANDKERCHIEF
It was a gray, wet and dreary 1962 day in Le Jardin d’enfance, our Pepto-pink kindergarten classroom in L’École Saint-Georges. Since it was right after Christmas, many of the sixty kids in my class were dripping snot, sniffling or feeling miserable. We were each confined behind a desk bolted to the floor, in perfect rows, which gave the place an orderly aspect that was prized in Catholic schools. Les Soeurs de Sainte Croix, the nuns who ran the school, might not be able to line up our interior lives. But they could align our bodies!
The 1960s were a time before Kleenex, children’s decongestant and antihistamine. So, it wasn’t unusual to see kids with running noses and watery eyes during cold season. And it wasn’t unusual that each child had a handkerchief. The girls’ hankies were small and lacy and tucked into purses or into a pocket of their knee-length dresses. The boys’ were square and rugged, and crammed roughly into pants pockets. If your nose was runny and you had to mouchez ton nez, you’d (if you were a ruffian) wipe it on your nearest manche, or shirt sleeve. If you were plus fin and refined, as was I, you’d tug the crusty rag out of your pocket, find a clean spot to do your business and return the wad to your pocket. By the end of the day, le mouchoir would be a sodden lump. But there was no paper waste!
One day, I couldn’t get the soggy linen back into my pocket. It was just too gummy and balled up. Aha! I thought. I will refold it properly. Then it will fit! I unfolded the cloth, with its many copper-colored and still damp encrustations, onto my desktop. I carefully tugged to free the snot-stuck fibers from one another. I had just made my first major fold when I heard the sound that made my heart stop.
“Jean Pouliot! En avant!”
It was the voice of Madame Péllerin, our maîtresse, who sat behind a desk on a raised platform at the front of the classroom. Usually soft and kindly, her voice was now a harsh bellow.
I could not for the life of me imagine why I, a saintly and obedient boy, was being called to the front of the class, a common punishment for misbehavior. Shame burning my cheeks and blurring my vision, I rose from my seat and walked to a spot near Madame Péllerin’s desk. Heads turned as I passed. Ninety-eight eyeballs witnessed my fall from grace.
“À genou!”
She was ordering me to my knees. In front of everybody!
I knelt, something I knew well from attending weekly Mass with my parents. I waited. And I wondered. What had I done wrong? What vile act merited such a humiliating punishment? After a few minutes, Madame Péllerin, considering me duly chastened, ordered me back to my desk. As I walked numbly back to my seat, I guessed that the business with the handkerchief had somehow figured in my plight. But how? I balled the disgusting cloth and shoved it into my pocket. It no longer mattered if it didn’t fit perfectly. Exposing a few of my boogers beat being called out again.
I thought of this story recently as I was parked outside our local supermarket, waiting for my wife to pick up some cough syrup for—you guessed it—a post-Christmas winter flu. My pockets were bulging with once-used Kleenex (or napkins or paper towels) mostly containing the runoff from my overactive nasal mucus glands. I needed some DayQuil to knock down my running nose and calm my cough. As I sat with the car running in the fire lane, something I had done hundreds of times before, blinking yellow lights appeared behind me. I didn’t think much about it until I saw, in my side mirror, a meter maid approaching. Evidently my hangdog appearance failed to melt her heart; she left me with a fifty-dollar ticket for doing what thousands of shoppers and even cops and firemen did on a regular basis.
Frankly the fine was overkill as far as teaching me not to park in a fire lane. Two minutes à genou on the pavement in front of the passing shoppers would have had done the trick just fine.