Today during play practice, a fellow crew member and I were asked to go out to "the garage" to search for some garment racks. It turned out "the garage" was just that - a three-car storage center for the priests, attached to the rectory. With keys in hand we ambled up to the garage doors and realized that none of them had locks - that the only way in was through the back door of the rectory.

Barb and I looked at each other in a mild panic, and I uttered, in my best Paul Lynde-channeled-through-Roger-the-alien, "Un-comfortable!"

She noted, "Well lets knock or try to make noise. We don't want to wander in without someone knowing we are there."

She turned the lock and we entered the surprisingly dismal brown hallway and frantically searched for the garage door. I felt like Nancy Drew! I'm not sure how to explain it, but it smelled like Old Man in there: a brew of musty tweed overcoats, mothballs and oatmeal. Delicious! Hardly the glamourous conclave I expected.

Barb nervously remarked, "Let's hurry and find this stuff and get the hell out of here before we cause some kind of scandal."

Scandal. That got me thinking. Yes, there have been way too many sickening tales of abuse involving the clergy in the past few decades. But all I could focus on was was a more amusing - and in the end, totally innocent - scandal-that-never-was.

Back in the day, my 8th grade classmates and I strived to gain the romantic attenion of a young priest who occasionaly visited our school. To his credit, he would not allow any of us to succeed.

Ours was an all-girls, 1st through 8th grade school, run by an order of nuns, and housed in their convent. I cannot imagine a parent being able to possibly sequester a daughter more than my classmates and I were sheltered from the world - not to mention from men. Except for dads and male siblings, very few of us had any contact with boys our own age or, for that matter, of ANY age. And unlike the girls in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, we didn't even have male teachers employed at the school. It was as hardcore virgin-keeping as you can get.

In our final year, a new nun came to the school. Its likely a good thing she wasn't sent to an all-boys school to teach: she was stunningly beautiful. Think Julie Andrews (she played the guitar and was the music teacher) mixed with a bit of Meg Ryan and Tea Leoni. Sister Maria was slender, freckle-faced, and always looked like she had on piles of eye makeup because she was blessed with long, thick, pitch-black eyelashes. She was also very kind and extraordinarily perky.

Some months into the school year, she conferred with our 8th grade teacher, Sister Angele, about an opportunity for her sibling to practice giving lectures on religion to us before being assigned to a permament classroom. Her sibling was a newly-ordained and outrageously handsome priest: "Father Pat."

The first time Father Pat visited our class, all 25 of us naive, 13-year old virgins were agog, staring at this celibate wonder in black clothing. If memory serves, an apt comparison would be a delicious combo of young Hugh Grant toughened up with just a hint of Jon Bon Jovi.

After his lecture, we convened to the cafeteria for lunch. And then the trouble started. All of us, even some of the 7th-graders, first giggled about him and then began plotting on how to get attention from our newest Teen Dream. A few of the bolder girls would pretend they couldn't open their thermoses and would ask the "man of the House" to take a crack at it. After years of dishing about the aribrushed boys (Matt Dillon, C. Thomas Howell, etc.) in Tiger Beat magazine, having a real, live cutie in da' house was too much for our young adolescent libidos to handle.

He made subsequent visits, helping out with First Friday Mass or other occasions for the entire school

Some weeks later, out of the blue, Sister Angele announced that we were doing something "different" for religion class: Father Pat was going to visit to talk to us about "vocations." 

[For those not in-the-know, a "vocation" in Catholic school meant an implied ranking of #1:priest/nun, #2:married with scads of kids, and a distant #3: single career person.]

Upon her announcement EVERY hand went up. "Sister? Can I be excused?"  The entire class of plaid-clad Lolitas filed into the bathroom to smear on gobs of purple lipgloss, and touch up their Love's Baby Soft cologne. I recall one gal had even undone the top botton of her peter-pan-collar uniform blouse which was outrageous beyond belief.

We filed back in just as Father Pat arrived, and too late for Sister Angele to make us scrub off our tacky makeup.

We listened intently, some girls being so bold (the sluts!) as to concoct questions about religous life to ask Father Pat.

After his talk, we were told by Sister Angele to remain in our seats for lunch. She went out in the hall to talk to Father Pat. When she returned alone, she scolded us, with blushed cheeks.

"Girls, I am so embarassed. I'm sorry, but I had to tell Father Pat not to come back because you are just too silly."

Then WE were embarrassed and genuinely crushed. "Silly?" We thought we were being sexy. Clearly, Sister Angele recognized our antics - did that mean Father Pat thought us silly and immature, too?

From what I understand, Father Pat went on to have a successful career in Catholic education, working his way up to principal of a high school. I wonder if he ever chuckles about the 25 Mrs. Robinson-wannabees who desperately endeavored to entice him into scandal?