Read Teacher Man: A Memoir for Free Online

Sins: Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, Sloth. He would point the stick and say, Madigan, confess to us how you committed the Deadly Sin, Envy. Our favorite Deadly Sin for confessing was Gluttony, and when he pointed the stick at Paddy Clohessy and told him, Clohessy, the Gluttony, Paddy described a meal you could only dream about: pig’s head with potatoes and cabbage and mustard, no end of lemonade to wash it down, followed by ice cream and biscuits and tea with loads of milk and sugar and, if you liked, you could rest awhile and have more of the same, your mother not a bit put out by your appetite, because there was enough for everyone and more where that came from.
    The master said, Clohessy, you are a poet of the palate. No one knew what palate meant till three of us went around the corner to see if the Andrew Carnegie librarian might let us look at the big dictionary near her desk. She said, What do ye want to know palate for? and when we told her that’s what Paddy Clohessy was a poet of she looked up the word and said our teacher must be losing his wits. Paddy was stubborn. He asked her what palate was and when she said it was the center of taste sensation he looked delighted with himself and made clucking noises with his tongue. He even did it going through the streets till Billy Campbell asked him to stop as it was making him hungry.
    We confessed to breaking all the Ten Commandments. If you said you committed adultery or coveted your neighbor’s wife the master knew you didn’t know what you were talking about, Don’t get above yourself, boy, and moved on to the next penitent.
    After First Communion we continued Examination of Conscience for the next sacrament: Confirmation. The priest said Examination of Conscience and confession would save us from hell. His name was Father White and we were interested in him because one of the boys said he never wanted to be a priest at all. His mother forced him into the priesthood. We doubted that boy, but he said he knew one of the maids at the priests’ house and she said Father White got drunk at dinner and told the other priests his only dream was to grow up and drive the bus that went from Limerick to Galway and back but his mother wouldn’t let him. It was strange to be examined by someone who became a priest because his mother made him. I wondered if the dream of the bus was in his head while he stood at the altar saying Mass. It was strange, also, to think of a priest getting drunk, because everyone knows they’re not supposed to. I used to look at buses passing by and picture him up there, smiling away and no priestly collar choking the life out of him.
    When you get into the habit of examining your conscience it’s hard to stop, especially when you’re an Irish Catholic boy. If you do bad things you look into your soul, and there are the sins, festering. Everything is either a sin or not a sin and that’s an idea you might carry in your head the rest of your life. Then when you grow up and drift away from the church,
Mea culpa
is a faint whisper in your past. It’s still there, but now you’re older and not so easily frightened.
    When you’re in a state of grace the soul is a pure dazzling white surface, but your sins create abscesses that ooze and stink. You try to save yourself with
Mea culpa,
the only Latin words that mean anything to you or God.
    If I could travel to my twenty-seventh year, my first teaching year, I’d take me out for a steak, a baked potato, a pint of stout. I’d give myself a good talking to. For Christ’s sake, kid, straighten up. Throw back those miserable bony shoulders. Stop mumbling. Speak up. Stop putting yourself down. In that department the world will be happy to oblige. You’re starting your teaching career, and it isn’t an easy life. I know. I did it. You’d be better off as a cop. At least you’d have a gun or a stick to defend yourself. A teacher has nothing but his mouth. If you don’t learn to