I totally bombed my first confession.
It’s something that the perfectionist over-achiever in me can’t let go of (almost twenty years later).
It started off well enough. I hesitantly crept into the holy hallowed phone booth. (I realize that “holy hallowed” is redundant, but there were confession boxes on both sides of the priest.) I was just working myself into a good claustrophobic panic when the little listening door swung back with a loud, echoing THWACK! which I mistook for the sound of the Angel of Judgment alighting on the top of my booth ready to smite me for my horrible digressions. I instinctively ducked and slowly gazed up towards the ceiling.
A deep voice acknowledged me.
For a split-second I might have honestly believed it was God, but then I experienced a moment of clarity and realized that the priest was ready to hear me. I found my voice and recited my well-rehearsed, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession.”
I delivered every practiced prayer and response flawlessly. I knew them by heart. I was such a good little Christian.
But when it came time to actually confess my sins . . . I drew a blank.
It occurred to me then that in all my efforts to perfect the rote memory portion of this blessed sacrament, I had never once given any thought to the sins I was going to confess. Maybe I expected they would just come to me at the necessary time, but in the moment of truth I found my skill for improv lacking.
I began to tremble. Surely I must have sins to cleanse from my unworthy mortal soul. How hard could it be to think of them? I closed my eyes tightly and tried to remember the last thing I’d done to get me into trouble. Still my mind was a tabula rasa. I considered making something up but that would be lying, which was a sin in itself and, at the very least, counterproductive.
By now it seemed as if the priest had been waiting an eternity. The whole world was created in less time. I began to panic. Would Father believe I had a Jesus complex and fancied myself without sin? Or would he think there were so many to choose from that I didn’t know where to begin?
I tried starting over, hesitated, stuttered and stopped. Breathing became difficult and my eyes brimmed with tears. Realizing we were getting nowhere, the priest began to feed me ideas. He started off with what I expect are standard sins.
“Do you obey your father and mother?”
“Yes,” I replied in a quivering voice.
“All the time?”
I thought about that for a moment as I clasped and unclasped my shaky hands. “Um . . . I suppose not.”
“Have you ever hurt another person?”
I had a younger brother and sister. I couldn’t remember for sure, but I was fairly certain they may have received a Smurf bite every now and then. I nodded and sniffled. “Yes.”
My nerves were shot. My heart was pounding in my ears. I was weak and vulnerable. I agreed to every suggestion the priest gave. I was like a mentally deficient criminal unwittingly confessing to murder one. I admitted to things that weren’t even true without giving a thought to if I had done them. By the time I was finished my sins included skipping church to go to birthday parties, being lazy about doing my homework, telling ethnic jokes, setting the neighbor’s cat on fire, stealing my grandmother’s prescription painkillers, loving Santa Claus more than Jesus, saying something unholy about one of the altar boys, and plotting world domination.
“Oh!” I said, finally remembering one of my own, “and I instigate my sister.”
“Five ‘Hail Marys’,” the priest said.
I said two. Five seemed a little steep to me, considering I hadn’t perpetrated half the crimes I’d confessed to. Granted, five wasn’t an exorbitant number. It was really quite manageable. But I had to stick to my principles. Did I deserve so harsh a sentence? No, of course not. So what if I pared down my penance? I mean, it’s not like anyone was counting, right?
Right?
I added an extra ‘Our Father,’ just in case.
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