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St. Mary’s School
White
Easter; Tornado Tuesday
By Kathy Ayette
You need not be a weather geek glued to the weather channel to notice
that April’s weather has been strange. We “enjoyed” a white Easter and
what I like to call Tornado Tuesday. By the way, Tornado Tuesday will
be mentioned again in this column.
The teachers attended one day of the NCEA convention. The opening Mass
was wonderful.
The main celebrant was Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, the Cardinal Prefect
of the Congregation for Catholic Education for the Vatican. He brought
a special blessing from Pope Francis. After Mass the remainder of the
day was spent attending sessions and going through the expo. I had
traveled to the convention with one of the retired teachers who had
planned to stay for all three days of the convention. Because I needed
to be back at school on Wednesday I caught a ride with our kindergarten
teacher, Ashley, and another teacher who to protect her identity will
be referred to as Dorothy, as in the Wizard of Oz. As we left
Cincinnati, the sky began to get gray. Now Dorothy is just a tad bit
leery of storms, especially storms with twirly clouds. As soon as the
first cloud appeared on the horizon, she began to hint that perhaps we
needed to be ready to pull off and began to invoke the Lord for
protection. I, being Cleopatra, Queen of De-nial, saw no reason to
panic about a little bit of gray so far away. As we continued to drive,
the sky became darker, Dorothy became more insistent that if it got bad
we would pull off. Ashley assured her, we would stop if necessary and I
suggested taking a few deep breaths in between invoking Heaven’s
protection. As the rain and wind began, we listened to the radio and
heard all the dire warnings and the advice that in case we spotted a
funnel cloud, we should abandon the car and lie face down in a ditch,
which frankly I have never understood. If a tornado can pick up a
house, why not a slightly obese teacher? Besides that Dorothy has a bad
knee and I have my bad hip, so if the three of us were to lie down in
the ditch, only one of us would be able to get up again. Then the
tornado siren began to wail. At this point, we all agreed that finding
shelter would be a good thing. Frankly I believe at this point Dorothy
was ready to jump out of the car if we didn’t agree to seek shelter. We
pulled off the nearest exit and found a hotel in which to shelter.
Remember Dorothy’s bad knee? When we pulled into the parking lot she
catapulted from the car, sprinted across the parking lot and was at the
door before I had even gotten out of the car. In her defense she was
terribly frightened, but apologetic at leaving me behind. Ashely who
was still close turned to help me, but I bravely said, “Go on, save
yourself!” I really wasn’t too worried. At this point both rain and
trees were still vertical. We took shelter in the lobby of the hotel
which had ceiling to floor windows. I kind of wondered if perhaps that
ditch might have been the better option. As it was we rode out the
storm in the hotel lobby. After the wind and rain had died down we
continued on our way, and obviously we survived our harrowing
experience.
On a little calmer note, the fourth graders worked on some learning
activities to help their kindergarten buddies with letter recognition,
alphabetizing, rhyming words and word/picture recognition. The fourth
graders were visited by Polly Paleontologist (Molly Hunt) and learned
about rocks, the rock cycle and fossils.
The students performed PT: The Greatest Showman on Earth on Friday,
April 13. The performance was free and open to the public. The Tom and
Etta Mae Foley Memorial Dinner and Auction will be April 21 at Paws
Bingo Hall. The meal will be served from 5pm to 7pm and the auction
will begin at 6pm. The Spring Spectacular will be April 30 beginning at
6:30 pm.
Until next month, keep looking for spring!
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