My Unforgettable Story from the Confessional
Batang masunurin pa kasi ako noon.
Whenever we go home to my parents’ house in our province, we always make sure to take time to visit our hometown’s church and pray. During our last visit, we passed by the old confessional, which brought back an unforgettable and funny story that happened way back in 1991.
I was in Grade 3 at that time, about 8 or 9 years old. Since I was studying in a Catholic school, part of our activities lined up for the year was to go to confession. It was usually done in the afternoon. I’m not sure if it was twice or thrice a year, but I recall that we were excited for it since that meant that class was only in the morning.
Before going to confession, we would always remind each other, “Tagalan mo a!” It was a whole class of 8- and 9-year-olds conniving to waste everyone’s time, including that of our good parish priest, so that we wouldn’t have class in the afternoon. Later on, they found out that I was the most compliant.
Anyway, before that, we would usually practice in class. We would start with the sign of the cross, then “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…” then enumerate your sins to the priest, then the act of contrition, then the absolution from sins, and finally the priest would tell you that you must now go.
Now, I’m someone who follows instructions down to the T. Each step is a cue for me to proceed to the next step. If I miss one step, I would be in a deadlock. That’s just what happened.
Anyway, the time for confession came, and everyone proceeded as usual. When it was my time, I went through the usual routine, but the priest did not say “you may now go” and I was waiting for that. So I stayed in the confessional expecting him to say that the next time he opened the grille.
However, what happened next was that we went through the whole thing again, still without him saying that I may already go. Again, I waited some more. That went on for three or four more cycles (the good priest didn’t seem to notice that it was me, seemingly imprisoned in that cycle). It came to a point that I was just inventing sins because I couldn’t think of anything anymore. But I kept stating “lying” in my list of sins because I knew that I was already fabricating my spiel.
I wasn’t panicking because I was holding on to a last thread of hope that the priest would say that I may already go. That wasn’t the scene outside, though, because half of the girls were already done, and there were about ¾ of the boys who still needed to confess their sins. Two of my classmates already peeked and asked me what was taking so long (I said, “Hindi pa ko pinapalabas e!”). My adviser finally came and whispered, “Halika na, okay na yan.” That was the only time that I went out of the confessional.
My classmates were teasing me afterwards, but we just laughed about it. I just said, “Hindi kasi ako pinapalabas ni, Father. Baka magalit pag hindi ako lumabas.“
Plus, I said that at least we didn’t have class in the afternoon anymore. We kept laughing at that experience. The funny thing is it happened again in our next confession. Kids being kids, we just laughed about it again.
One of my classmates didn’t forget that incident; we even talked about it after college. She even tagged me in a Friendster note (or Facebook?) about it, haha.
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