I live in an apartment building on my campus, and there's a nun that lives two doors down named Sister Anne. She's five foot four, 87 years old, and speaks in a thick Irish accent. The other day, my roommate and I were taking the big blue recycling bin to the trash room when we heard the elevator bell ring and saw Sister Anne emerge from the metal doors.
"Good evening!" She greeted warmly, walking over to us even though her room was on the opposite side of the hall. We greeted her in return, asking how she was, but her eyes were fixed on the cardboard box I was balancing in my hand, where I had placed cans and other smaller cardboard boxes so as to carry them all to the trash room.
"I like the way you've organized your recycling," She told me, a smile suddenly painting her face. "Some people are just so careless about it," she muttered, her face darkening with a scowl. "I just feel so terrible for the men who have to clean up after us."
She was referring to the maintenance employees who came early every morning to discard of trash and recyclables, vacuum the floors, and sweep the staircases. If we didn't properly break down our cardboard boxes, they would have to do so, delaying their already busy work of cleaning the apartment complex. "We must make their job easier," Sister Anne sighed. And, with a determined tone, added: "And we must always recycle."
My roommate and I nodded in agreement, inserting various affirmations about recycling and being a good person that we knew she would approve of. Sister Anne, however, wasn't as focused on what we had to say as she was with the stress ball she had been squeezing in her palm. "What is this made out of?" She asked us, a look of genuine concern on her face.
"Flour, water, and salt," we told her, since our other roommate had just returned from the RA-sponsored DIY stress ball program. Sister Anne nodded and continued pressing it between her fingers as my roommate and I exchanged charmingly amused glances at her innocence. Sister Anne remained silent.
"It's not hard enough," she concluded after a moment, squinting her eyes and staring at the wall behind us. "It's not hard enough to make an impact." My roommate and I burst out laughing at the elderly nun's sudden expression of violence. We agreed with Sister Anne that if a stress ball was really meant to relieve stress, it should really make an impact if thrown at a wall out of anger.
"It is pretty cool, though," Sister Anne conceded, handing it to the RA's who came up with the idea of making your own stress ball. "My creativity could never carry me to that reach." My roommate and I smiled in reply. "Young people these days really know what they are doing. I can't even use my computer!" She exclaimed, letting out a chuckle.
I laughed as well, empathizing with Sister Anne by telling her that even as a "young person," I was never technologically savvy. Just the other day, I assured her, I accidentally deleted an essay from my desktop which I needed for class.
"Yes!" Sister Anne yelled, pleased that finally someone shared in her technological ignorance. "You know," she began, wagging her pointer finger at us, "My nun friends say, 'that Anne, she can't figure out a computer, but give her a paper and a pen and she can articulate something beautifully.'" My roommate and I smiled, mentioning something about how writing was a loss art, and how young people these days were always glued to some screen or another. Sister Anne seemed to approve of us saying so.
She skipped to another topic then, even though we had already been standing in the narrow hallway for over 15 minutes. Somehow she got to describing how she fell three years ago and had to have her face reconstructed, which made her eyebrows go behind her hairline. We weren't quite sure what she meant, but we offered sympathetic sighs.
"My nephew always asks me where my eyebrows went," she explained, looking at the ground, then back up at us with imploring eyes. "Why must we always point out each others faults?"
"That's a great question," was the wisest thing I could think to say in return.
"Well, I must be going," Sister Anne said, turning towards her door. "Get a lot of sleep tonight," she told us. As she left she came across the cork board which my RA had put on the wall, that read, "What's up Smith?"--the name of my building which conveniently happened to be Sister Anne's last name.
"What's up Smith?" She read aloud, pointing to the board and then to herself, giggling. My roommate and I burst out laughing once again and I clutched the wall to stay upright.
With that, Sister Anne smiled and walked towards her room. "Goodbye girls," she said. "Remember, we must not take life too seriously."
