The earliest memories I have of church as a little boy is of the smell of incense. Religion became something imponderable and mysterious the moment I smelled the burning incense and heard the priest chanting over and over again in singsong Latin.
I knew this was something I was never going to be able to figure out.
For some reason, probably having to do with the cost of tuition, no one in my entire family ever went to parochial school. Early on during after-school Catholic instructions, I learned this simple fact set me apart. I was a public-school student.
The nuns seemed surprised that as a "public," I was able to function as a reasonably normal human being. They seemed genuinely pleased to find that none of us "publics" had two heads or walked on cloven hooves. If we responded to their questions from the Baltimore Catechism correctly, it often prompted the response, "Not bad for a public-school student."
I stayed out of trouble until one sunny day I cut instructions to play touch football on Wolf Street and was ratted out to the nuns by Louise Silla. Whatever the punishment was, it did not bring back memories of Torquemada and the Inquisition.
Receiving communion is not only an important religious moment in a young "public’s" life, but it is also a bit terrifying. We were instructed that under no circumstances were we to chew on the host. As new Catholics we were taught that the host is literally the body and blood of Christ, so this was no stick of Double Bubble we had in our mouths.
Maybe because of this awesome responsibility, I found it incredibly difficult to swallow the host. Perhaps this was my public-school incompetence but, whatever the reason, the host seemed to stick to the roof of my mouth. Nothing could dislodge the wafer that clung tenaciously. It was as if it had been applied to the roof of my mouth with Krazy Glue.
I was certain that the good sisters were watching me carefully. I used my tongue like an ice scraper and finally the shriveled remnants of the host worked its way down my nervous gullet. I was scarred for life. To this day I won’t even chew gum.
The following year, we "publics" had to attend the same set of instructions over again before we could be confirmed. We were told that by receiving Confirmation, we were now "Soldiers of Christ." Since we had always called Jesus the "Prince of Peace," this seemed to be somewhat paradoxical, but I wasn’t going to quibble.
The thing about Confirmation that struck me was we got to choose who would be our Godfather (this was in the days before Marlon Brando gave the term a whole different meaning).
What was confusing was that we already had Godparents from when we were baptized and we didn’t know what function they served. In fact, I had not seen my baptismal Godfather since my baptism. My mother called him "Mikey the Fighter" because his name was Mike and he was a boxer. My mother always had a certain clarity in her use of nicknames.
She was incensed that Mikey never paid any attention to me and constantly reminded my father that he had been his choice, not hers. I was not offended. I didn’t know what Mikey was supposed to do anyway as my Godfather.
But at Confirmation I got a chance to right what was apparently a historic wrong in my family. I insisted that I wanted my uncle Johnny to be my Godfather. The only problem was that Uncle Johnny had a broken foot at Confirmation time. My folks, for some reason, were eager to find a replacement for Uncle Johnny, but I would hear none of it. If they had screwed up once with Mikey the Fighter, how could I trust them? I won.
And so it was that on the day of Confirmation, Uncle Johnny heroically limped into the pew carrying a crutch. Among the other Godfathers I recognized that day in church were some neighborhood bookies who apparently had not been disqualified from serving.
I had another problem at Confirmation, of a more sensitive nature. The official uniform of the day consisted of navy-blue pants. I had to wear a pair of hand-me-down woolen knickers from my cousin Nick. I wasn’t big on knickers and to this day I even hate the New York Knicks but, obedient child that I was, I wore the knickers.
The problem is that I can’t stand the itchiness of wool next to my tender skin. In order to abide the wool, I decided to wear cotton pajama bottoms under my knickers (this may explain my sympathy for Michael Jackson).
Unfortunately at the altar as I was receiving the sacrament, with Uncle Johnny standing behind me with his crutch, my pajamas came down and showed underneath my knickers. Also, unfortunately, they were bright red.
Perhaps the nuns were right about the "publics."
