Hands in Pockets
Freshman orientation and Mother dropped me off at the school entrance. She tried to hug me but I wouldn’t let her. I was almost fourteen, for Christ’s sake. Boys were already lining up in the school parking lot and I didn’t want to be late. It was orientation, my first day as a freshman in high school. I was almost grown up. I was a St. Sebastian student. And terrified.
A young-looking priest—I’d only known the old and Irish ones in my parish—pointed to the rows of freshmen and told me to line up. Black cassocked priests with their rosary beads dangling from their belts, walked up and down the lines, telling us not to speak to our neighbors in front or in back, or in the columns now forming adjacent to us. I’d never seen a priest this up close and personal. True, I’d gon
