Once More with Feeling

This is the speech I made at the Year Nine Graduation Night tonight. I was the keynote speaker. Often with these things they go for a long time and, while important, can get a bit much for parents. As beliefs and values manager I wanted to do something people weren’t anticipating. The entire speech was done with a Scottish accent. It worked so well the Principal told of an English couple who exclaimed that they hadn’t realized that I was Scottish. He took great pleasure in telling them that I wasn’t. Yep… it was a huge risk but I think we pulled it off. It ends with a Flashdance routine. Seriously.


I’d like to thank Miss O’Leary for the opportunity to speak to everyone, it is a privilege for you to be able to listen to the sound of my voice tonight.

I wanted to do something a bit different to what you’re perhaps used to … so I asked Miss O’Leary: do you think I could dance for them tonight – interpretive dance of 1 Corinthians Chapter 13…. but she thought better of it. Alarms the parents.
And so I thought I’d let you in on a couple of secrets about my self… something of my past, something of where I come from, and how I got here.

A lot of students ask me “Mr. Limb… why did you choose to become a priest?”
Well, for a start there’s a couple of things to clear up. Number One… I’m not a priest, and number two it’s Mrs….

Well, the question gives me pause to think about my time as a young person in Scotland. We didn’t have all the advantages that you have, for example there were no lights in the halls we had to meet in. They were cold and damp and they had tonnes of old people – called teachers – they weren’t the sexy young things that are surrounding you here tonight. And you could see these old folk drifting around in the murky darkness. They used to scare the daylights out of me, you could never pick where they would pop up.
“Limb! What are you doing here?”
“Havin a heart attack… I thought I was being attacked by a giant stick o’ leather or the undead.”
They weren’t particularly fast, but then they didn’t have to be it was dark even in the middle of the day.

And the reigns that we used to have in Scotland… let me tell you about the reigns. From 7.30am till 6 o’clock in the evening we would have to wear reigns like a horse until we were 6 years old. It was terrible, the metal bits they used to put in your mouth would chip your teeth – and all of us had these badly chipped wee milk teeth, it was good for tourism though – we’d bear our teeth at tourists and play village of the damned on Friday nights.

On weekends we would be yoked to ploughs were we would work the fields, for we’d eaten all the horses. But we kept up our spirits, of course the longer we kept up our spirits, the more crooked the lines we ploughed became.

And so when we were old enough we were boxed up and sent to boarding school. It was awful being put in those boxes. There wasn’t much room to move, and then once they started moving us our food would go everywhere. And then, when you need to go to the toilet… well lets just say it got a wee bit confusing as to what was what. It was a bit frightening at first, but once we learnt we could look through the air holes and other such luxuries it gave us the giddy sense of freedom. At one point in the journey some of us ended up in the same post office – that was great. We’d whisper to one another,
“Edwards…. What are you doing?”
“Nothin’ what are you doing…?”
“Nothing (pause) hey Edwards do you want to set fire to something?”
“Yes!” (kind of like a ‘hell yes’)
“Do you have any matches?”
“No…. do you?”
“No”
“Is your cardboard wet?”
And to think, all that combustible material…..

One of my friends, Warren, his parents put the wrong address on his box and he wound up in Switzerland. He told us that there are no old people there, they chased them off the mountains. And he also got a Swiss Army Knife. Let me tell you that came in useful during our school years and we were attacked by bears. We’re the reason why there are no more bears in Scotland.

There was one thing I hated about Boarding school more than anything else. And people talk about boarding school – all the horrors they had to face. But there was one horror more horrible than all the other horrors out together to create the horrible of all horribles.

(whisper) It was the dancing.

After being soundly whipped, so we’d pay attention to the lessons about love and grace, we were taken to this great big hall with wooden floors. It was dark and then something moved off in the gloom. Warren leaned over to me, “It’s an old person”
“Nah,” I said, “it’s moving too quickly… it something else”.
Then we saw this… glow. This tiny red glow getting closer and closer. And then behind the little red glow, a enormous shadow loomed. It was the biggest nun I had ever seen in me life. And I’ll never forget what she said that first time we met her… as she took a drag on her Cigarette.
(Burlesque American accent) “ Life is going to throw some nasty things at ya boys. If you’re to get through life…. You’re going to have to be able to (do a dance move) dance. You see, dancing is the antidote to life’s miseries. Sadness – Happiness. Tears – Smiling, Fear – Courage.”. Well, I fairly filled my pants. AND then she danced like we’d never seen dancing before. And her cigarette lit up the darkness like a neon light – forming words as she moved about.…. Faith… Hope …. Love
I remember Warren looking at me… “ She’s not bad”
“I’ve seen better”
“What? Dancing?”
“Oh… I thought…her teeth… yeah, no she’s really good at dancing”

So the nun, Bertha, along with some other nuns, taught us to dance. Days, turned to weeks, weeks turned into months, and the months became a year. And then we were ready to tour. We were called “Bertha and the Nunettes” It was exciting at first, going to all those exotic places. Glasgow, Edinborough, London, Paris, Phuket. But then, when we got older we saw it for what it was. The mockeries from other school children who were taken to see us perform, as an example of what dancing could mean. far from being impressed they would yell out insults – “dance little nun boys”, “shake ya habit”, and the most savage of all, “hey look, dancing”. Well Warren had a shocking temper and he would just …explode – it was like fight club in tap shoes – but ultimately it was through those children that we saw what we really had become.

The word that began to circulate amongst us was… Exploitation with a distinctive Latino feel. … Soon the strain began to show. The late nights, show after show after show, the only relaxation that was allowed was Peter Allen videos. Peter Allen videos?!?

And then one night it all went horribly wrong. One of the stage managers left his pipe and matches back stage. Edwards got a hold of them. Bertha was out doing her opening routine with the other nuns “Come here all ye faithful or you’ll get yours”. Warren dared Edwards to flick a match onto the stage. The first match went up, a tiny symbol of dissention, of resistance, but Bertha’s tap shoe snuffed that out before anything could happen. One of the other nun’s saw us out of the corner of her eye and rushed across the stage when unfortunately the hem of her garment caught a stage light.

Now these stage lights were so hot that moths would evaporate if they ever danced across that beam of light. One time a circus troop lost all its poodles and ponies because they got too close to those lights. The smell was reported to be terrible. Well, this nun went up in a shrieking pillar of smoke and fire. And nun after nun burst into fire as they came in contact with one another. But as consummate performers they threw themselves into the act. They were like fiery stars in heaven. Dancing fiery nuns. The crowd went nuts, standing, cheering… applauding. And us boys learnt what commitment was.

Warren looked at me and Edwards and said – “You know what this means?” “Yeah”, I said, “the nuns have taken to wearing a polyester nylon mix– if only it were wool…. If only if were wool.”

We were all taken into custody. And we were told that we had a choice. You could either do time, or you could be sent down to Australia. I begged and I pleaded. “Please, please lock me up forever and throw away the key, just don’t send to that terrible, terrible place.”
Father Allen stopped me, sent all the others out of the room and leaned in close.
“Oh no Limb, we’ve got something special for you. You are going to where you won’t be coming back… a place we’ve arranged a rather special job for you so you can atone for all your sins.”

And now here I stand before you looking at your faces. The story finally told… of how it was that I became the Beliefs and Values manager. Each one a little punishment for all the sins of my past.

And sometimes, when I’m weary from another day of working at Carey Baptist College I will close my tired eyes and see Bertha -dancing in the gloom and the words lighting up the darkness. Faith, Hope ….Love.

To close (taking maracas from podium) I would like to do a brief interpretive dance. Flashdance music – “What a feeling” begins to play as I slow raise maracas into the air. I queued Nat (Year Nine Manager) to briskly arrive on stage and escort me off.