Page 20 - voices-09-2021

FROM THE WINGS

Why I’m Like This

PJ Kleffner, DTM
Immediate Past District Director

My column this month is based on a speech into the toilet and plugged it up, serious flooding

I gave at my Club last year when I started the ensued. The sink was mounted on the wall in the
Engaging Humor Path. I wanted to share a bit corner, but the room was so small that part of
of my background with my Club members to it actually extended over the toilet. If you were
help them understand the basis for my sense there for a “number two”, you had to rotate as

of humor. Growing up in a large family and you sat down to slide in under the sink.
attending Catholic school, I had plenty of It turns out that this wasn’t always a bad thing.
challenges and opportunities to develop my If you got a really nasty stomach bug that caused
sense of humor. both diarrhea AND vomiting, you could easily

We lived in southeast Portland in an old, manage both at the same time. (I’m sorry if you
Victorian house that was built in 1901. My can’t “unhear” that.)
German father and German-Irish mother had Another memorable part of growing up
twelve children, which was not uncommon for Catholic was attending Catholic School where

Catholic families during this post-World War II most of the teachers were nuns. My eighth-grade
era. There were six boys and six girls, but one teacher was Sister Gerard, who was also the
girl died from a birth defect when she was two school Principal. I was convinced that she hated
months old. That left only thirteen of us – two children, and was not cut out to be a teacher,

adults and eleven children – to share one and a let alone a nun. Ironically, I heard many years
half bathrooms. later that she left the nunnery and married an
Actually, it was more like one and a quarter ex-priest, so my instincts were spot on.
bathrooms, because the second one was in a On the first day of class, Sister Gerard

small closet on the side porch. Standing in the informed us that she planned to treat us like the
doorway, the toilet bowl was directly ahead of young adults that we were becoming in order
you against the back wall, and the water tank to prepare us for going off to high school the
was mounted way up on the wall. You had to following year. That meant when we arrived in

reach up and pull a chain to flush it. One feature the morning, or returned after breaks, we were
of this arrangement was that gravity REALLY free to mingle and chat with friends, UNTIL
enhanced the flushing action. If something like she came in and rang a small bell that she kept
a stuffed teddy bear happened to find its way on her desk. When she rang the bell, we were

20 ONE COMMUNITY