One Word on St Mary’s
Some of the quirks of living in an old Catholic girls’ school were nice and cultural like the large Red Baron-style stone cross with the mysterious Latin abbreviation on it, hovering overhead in the Parlor. Others were not really “cultural”—such as the feminine hygiene product depositories in the men’s bathrooms. What men’s bathrooms there were. When we arrived at the former St Mary’s Academy, there were only three men’s rooms, and two of them were wrapped up in the Nauvoo Restoration offices, generally agreed to be off-limits. Contrast that with the ladies’ rooms: Everywhere. Throughout the semester, bathrooms here and there swapped gender to masculinity, but even in the original three, it was an obvious slap job. I believe there was only one real urinal in the whole building, and it had its own stall! (Note to ladies: this is atypical.) Keep in mind that we are discussing a building most likely larger than whatever building you are currently in, and then imagine: One urinal for Really Big Building. Really, really big building. In fact, the current St Mary’s was built around the old St Mary’s (the old one then being demolished).
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The first few days we were constantly lost. When hallways curve out of sight and tunnels run into each other haphazardly and the entire building seems to be set at angles similar to those found on a Möbius Strip, getting lost becomes a very simple task indeed. It took me a long while to realize I could save several hundred steps cutting through the stage rather than the Sugar Bowl.1 That was a happy discovery.
While the building could be wildly perplexing at first, once it was understood, wow. Say you wanted to find someone. All you’ld have to do is search the building in shrinking concentric circles. Cake. Or say I needed to find someone who was on the forbidden girls’ hall. All I needed to do was yell down it; the shape of the hall carried my voice as far as it needed to go. Additionally, due to the remarkable nature of the dorms’ long, curved hallways, while no one could see more than fifteen feet down them before they curved away, you could hear every footstep with peculiar clarity. Since the halls were so long, sometimes it would be some time before you could discover who was coming towards the Parlor dragging one leg and teeheeing like Igor. But probably it was me. My behavior the direct result of a day of long walks in search of a simple urinal.
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Thanks for revisiting Nauvoo with me. I would love to hear your thoughts.