You Might Be My Lucky Star

Back when I was a high school, a few friends of mine introduced me to Saint Mary’s Academy. It seemed that Saint Mary’s was the place to go on Friday nights as it was an all-girls school and they held weekly dances there. The great thing about Saint Mary’s was that the girls could mainly be described as “troubled” as the general population consisted in large part of girls from Chicago sent to this remote location on the other side of the state when they became too wild for the parent’s to maintain.
Their loss was our gain.
Saint Mary’s incorporated a strict Catholic curriculum and the nuns that lead the school were fairly used to (and ready for) any teenage boy shenanigans. Nevertheless, we would make the fifteen-mile trek upriver to the dormitory on Friday nights to scope out these worldly ladies and introduce them to our corn-fed charm. Looking back now, I’m sure that they knew we looked like dorks, but their hormones were to a point where they really didn’t give a shit.
To be fair: neither did we. The only time we really devoted attention to this school was when we were sans girlfriends at our own school. Guys have hormones too, which is a polite way of saying we were looking for some easy trim.
That’s not to suggest that we ever got any. Getting a girl past the nuns was extremely difficult and just getting to second base with one of the chicks was equal to getting contraband into a prison. Seriously, you had to secure a lookout in the rec area (or outside in the courtyard if it was nice enough) in order to hustle your dangerous liaison behind the upright cafeteria tables just to make sure you weren’t caught by the ladies of Christ.
After a while (meaning after a year of trying) it got to be a bit too much. I mean, you really only got about five hours a week with your special someone and it was hardly ever alone. The girls never had long distance phone privileges, which meant you never got to talk to them unless you were willing to foot the bill yourself and call during the allotted hours.
Of interest is the fact that this Catholic girl’s school was located in one of the Mormon church’s most revered stopping points: Nauvoo, Illinois. Now, the Mormons have since bought the property that Saint Mary’s was housed on, effectively running the Catholics out the same way that they were run out (somewhat) nearly a century prior. In other words, don’t go looking for some Saint Mary’s poontang now because it ain’t there.
How does this story relate to anything remotely musical you may ask? The irony here isn’t on the push-and-pull of various religious entities; it’s with the irony that this is the place where I first heard Madonna.
In the fall of ’83, the lone boom box in the rec room at Saint Mary’s Academy incessantly played, thanks to the aid of the auto-reverse feature, the debut album of Madonna over and over. On one Sunday afternoon (you could visit the girls between lunch and Sunday dinner), I counted at least six consecutive spins of this album. As the synthesizer arc of “Lucky Star” announced the arrival of the seventh play, a sassy black girl marched over to the boombox and yelled “If I hear this “Lucky Star” shit one more time, I’m gonna break that tape in half.”
I love the Catholic imagery of Saint Mary’s combined with the Catholic imagery of Madge and, I must confess, that I’ve been a fan ever since. It’s weird how Madonna is still able to make hits while Saint Mary’s isn’t around to save souls like it used to, if it was even able to while it was up an running. To be honest, I don’t think there was a lot of hope for the girls of Saint Mary’s Academy to begin with.
Or maybe it was the endless subliminal messages of Madonna’s first album that ended up tearing down the walls of that curious institution.