Historically Inaccurate

🌥 F O U R 🌥

A nun walks into the Liberal Arts building.

No, that is not a joke. There is a nun in the Liberal Arts building.

It's me.

I'm the nun.

Here's the thing they don't tell you in Sunday school: Nun outfits are uncomfortable as hell. They're heavy, and hot, and surely were not meant to look flattering on anyone who is dressing up as one. Now, before anyone starts throwing stones (see what I did there?) I grew up Catholic, it's really rare not to be Catholic in a Mexican household, although diversity is a thing, thank you very much. I haven't stepped a foot inside a church since I was about twelve, though, and I'm fairly sure I will burst into flames if I do, so I keep my good distance from holy buildings, Catholic or not, ever since.

Why is it, then, that I am dressed as a nun walking around the Liberal Arts building, and thus willfully placing my neck on the guillotine that is social media?

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

She was a badass motherfucker, I'll tell you that. Born in the 1600's, she was always hungry for knowledge, and even joined a convent instead of marrying because, back in ye olde days, that would have gotten between her and her study. Sor Juana was so smart forty (male) scholars were invited to test her knowledge.  She became a philosopher, a playwright, a poet, and much more. She wrote for the king of Spain and was renowned for her skill. And this is just the summarized, lacking biography.

I could have bought a fancy old dress and used it as the kind she wore before she became a nun, but most of her work became known after she joined the convent. Besides, that would have cost me more than the money I spent in making up this costume, which constitutes of white bedsheets and a butchered brown hoodie. Bless Diane's heart for her sewing skills.

I must be offending so many people right now. I think, turning into the hallway that'll lead me to the club room.

The "club room" is simply a classroom the History Club occupies each week for our meetings. There is no official room, but it always happens to be the same one that is available for reservation, so we have somewhat taken over it every Saturday. In fact, Scott was arguing about how he was going to write our names under the chairs of the room to mark it as ours, until Alan reminded him that was vandalism — not that that stopped him, what did stop him was Carlos offering the idea of instead writing "PROPERTY OF THE HISTORY CLUB" on a white sticky note and pasting it to the ceiling.

I push the door open, looking up right as I enter the room, and sure enough, there it is. Its placement and color making it easy to miss if you don't know it's there to begin with.

Risking the chance of breaking all your hopes and dreams of a sleepy college town with a small history club having meetings in an #aestheticallypleasing auditorium, here at Westray we have no such thing. I'm not kidding. There's not even windows in our classroom, and if that doesn't scream fire hazard then the amount of desks crammed in the small cube surely does. The walls, ceiling, and floor are so white it's nearly painful and also casts an ill glow over anyone and everyone that enters the room. At the moment that appears to be only half of the History Club.

"Oh shit, no you didn't— " Scott jumps off from the professor's desk on which he was sitting a second ago, apprising a slice of pizza he probably brought himself.  He makes an exaggerated bow, "Sister, what brings you here?"

"To smite your ass," I move past him, making a beeline for the pizza.

"Oh, I would love for my ass to be smitten." His comment makes me choke on my own laugh.