IT’S ME AGAIN, FATHER

The church was eerily quiet as it always was on a Saturday afternoon about 4:30 pm. The only light came from the candles that were lit up on the altar and the two side altars. This was the scene every week on Saturday at this time for me. Aside for the few people who lined up at the various confessionals, and the few at the altar and in the pews doing penance, it was a lonesome place, but Mom and the teacher said I had to go.

Standing outside the confessional box, waiting, I was hungry, thinking about the steak my Mother was going to make when I got home, and the painful ritual of confessing my sins to the priest that awaited me behind the wooden door. I really hated to go to confession, because I really had no sins to speak of. My sins were of an eight-year old boy, and I had a litany that I repeated every week.

“Bless me Father for I have sinned, it has been one week since my last confession. I aggravated my Mother and Father, teased my sisters, took the name of the Lord thy God in vain and had an impure thought,”

The Priest: “Try not to sin and say three Hail Mary’s and Three Our Fathers.”

Off I went to the altar rail and quicker than the speeding train, faster than a bullet I said all the prayers. As I would walk down the aisle to leave the cathedral like church of Our Lady Of Lourdes in Brooklyn, I thought how sad I was because I didn’t have any sins that were interesting. Maybe I should find something to do to help it along. See my April 11th 2006 blog for some originality, but I was too young to confess.

Try as I could, everything came down to aggravating my parents or picking on my little sister, so I turned to the neighbors. They were around and available, and that is when I met Come Come-Ona-Get-Out. See my June 21, 2006 Blog; Come-Ona-Get-Out

There were other possibilities, too dangerous since they involved my short tempered Dad, and of course there was the corner bar and shoot the place up with my cap pistol, or the sloppy fruit stand with the immigrant owner who was always on the lookout for me. I could visit my grandmother and make fun a of all the non-English speaking visitors she had, or I could aggravate the members of the Republican Club as they played cards and swore off in Italian as they chased me out of the club. It seemed that all those things were quickly forgotten once I reached the confessional on a Saturday afternoon. Not because I choose to forget, they were just so common place that I didn’t think it was a sin anymore.

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