OK, I CONFESS!

The other night TLW (The Little Woman) and I were having dinner when this conversation came up after I asked her about her religion class she teaches for 7 year olds.

“So did you introduce Jesus to the little heathens?”

“Oh Joe, they were really shocked when I discussed confession to them, what they had to do and all. One little boy asks what if you don’t have sins?”

I started to chuckle and TLW asked what was so funny.

“Well when I went to confession in the city, there was only two sins I confessed to. The process went down like this:

Bless me Father for I have sinned, it’s been one week since my last confession. I aggravated my mother and father and I used the name of the Lord thy God in vain”.

This stops TLW cold.

“How old WERE YOU to be cursing?”

“Oh, maybe 8 years old.”

“And you said aggravated! I used ‘disobeyed’.

Well, I was only 8 years old, Mom would say I was aggravating her to death, and would go on with: WAAAAAIIITTTT until you father comes home, just wait! There was her additional line of I HOPE WHEN YOU HAVE CHILDREN, THEY DO TO YOU WHAT YOU ARE DOING TO ME!” I think she used that last intonation to scare me.

Being 8 years old, there weren’t too many sins I could come up with every Saturday afternoon by 4:00 PM. “AGGRAVATING” was a good word to throw in after only six days and two sins.

In those days dear old Mom strove to have my soul saved by any means possible. She used two methods, one was the wooden spoon, where she had an arsenal of different sizes, depending on the offense and it’s magnitude and one was the confessional. By sending me to the confessional, her hope was that at least one hour of saintliness would stick, and she would supplement it with hours of chasing me with the wooden spoon. More often than I care to remember Mom would chase me around the dining room table, and after a while of trying to catch an evasive bad boy, would sit and rest in one of the chairs for a minute or two. When she looked like she was getting bored, I would ask: “OK Mom, are you ready?, and she would try to lunge with the spoon as off we went. She was dangerous with the spoon and crafty, often aborting the rest before I was ready.

I think I was 12 years old when I realized the lady in her wedding picture was her, and she did NOT look like the end of an index finger pointing at me!