There are seven masters in Leamy’s National School and they all have leather straps, canes, blackthorn sticks. They hit you with the sticks on the shoulders, the back, the legs, and, especially, the hands. If they hit you on the the hands it’s called a slap. They hit you if you’re late, if you have a leaky nib on your pen, if you laugh, if you talk, and if you don’t know things.

They hit you if you don’t know why God made the world, if you don’t know the patron saint of Limerick, if you can’t recite the Apostles Creed, if you can’t add nineteen to forty-seven, if you can’t subtract nineteen from forty-seven, if you don’t know the chief towns and products of the thirty-two countries of Ireland, if you can’t find Bulgaria on the wall map of the world that’s blotted with spit, snot, and blobs of ink thrown by angry pupils expelled forever.