\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 During the past weeks I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve become addicted to C-Span, a public- affairs TV station originating in Congress. Each morning \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Washington Journal” features a guest, usually a member of Congress, who fields phone calls. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a Democrat, use this number; if Republican, dial this number, etc.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 No matter what Republican guest appears, Democrat callers are sure to attack the war in Iraq. Similarly, Republican callers have a weakness for Democratic jugulars. And so it went this week, when a caller asked, rhetorically, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why do you hate Bush?” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why are all Democrats cowards?” and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you realize that criticism of the war on \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctear\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 demoralizes our troops and emboldens the enemy?”<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Much of it is a diversion. The caller \u00e2\u20ac\u201d not just this one but virtually anyone with a strong opinion \u00e2\u20ac\u201d tends to equate criticism of the war with the lack of patriotism.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 But lest this column become a Iraqi diatribe, let me explain how young my two classmates and I were when we conjured up elaborate plans to put the art of diversion to good use.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The method is simple: distract the other person.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The three of us had a simplistic view of religion, growing up in the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc40s and attending Immaculate Conception School. Rightly or wrongly, we imagined our purpose in life, our goal, as something we acquire through indulgences.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Our world picture was of the path to heaven as a filling station- convenience store, which we needed to visit often.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Appropriately, Allsup\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, a filling station-convenience store, sits on the exact location of the original I.C. church, at Grand, University and Fifth Street. The nuns at our school, especially Sister Mary Assassinata, implored us to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153make a visit,” to utter a few prayers and thereby earn some indulgences which, Sister assured us, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153will earn you a higher place in heaven.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 But what if I go to the other place? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s your problem, Arthur.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Though a lot of what I write at this moment seems trivial, even frivolous and a bit sacrilegious, to a 10-year-old old enough to remember the horrors of World War II, it was no laughing matter.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 One afternoon, our teacher selected Fred, Charlie and me to bang out the erasers, which meant leaning over the second- or third-story window and\u00c2\u00a0whacking the dust off the erasers. That delayed my arrival at home, which demanded a star-chamber type questioning.
\n\u00c2\u00a0Mom wanted to know exactly what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been up to. Caked in chalk dust, I figured she knew. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What did you do to deserve that punishment?” she asked, trying to coerce me into admitting I had lied, stolen something or had impure thoughts, or all of the above.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, Fred, Charlie and I thought we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been accorded an honor, imagining the effort we exerted in banging the erasers as the vicarious pounding of the faces of Gilbert, Jack and Jerry, the school\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s biggest bullies.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Finally convinced I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t guilty of apostasy, Mom went easy on me. And that break taught me how to get mileage out of the heretofore me tioned diversion.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 One afternoon a week, several of us gathered for after-school discussions of religion, sometimes with a nun in charge, sometimes solo. The rest of the days I was expected home immediately after the final bell. So I learned to make a pit-spot at the I.C. church on the way home. Saying a few prayers generally didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take long, but that became my excuse for arriving home late. It was fun to run through sprinklers in people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s yards, walk up and down Douglas, watch older boys play pinball and generally amuse myself.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 In church after school, I rehearsed my game plan:
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 When Mom would ask why I was a half hour late, my answer would be, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was in chur-urch.” I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d give it an extra syllable for emphasis. I hoped that would suffice. Had she asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And exactly how long were you in chur-urch?” I would have been in even deeper trouble.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 My plan was to appear so credible that Mom would assume I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d qualified for canonization, and she was not to ask whether part of the lateness was due to horsing around, entering pool halls and engaging in debauchery.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Whether through fatigue or preoccupation, Mom ended Day One of interrogation peacefully, and that emboldened me to do it again. Charlie and Fred relayed similar diversions of their tardiness to their parents but never seemed to suffer any consequences.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The second day I went to Plan B. In church after school, I decided that if challenged, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d throw the book at Mom. By book, obviously I meant the Bible, and surely in the New Testament there must be something about spending time in church. Yet, this fifth-grader
\nimagined the crime of using the chur-urch as an excuse for frolicking around. I imagined a bevy of pious ladies kneeling behind me, reading my devious, guilt-ridden mind, speed-dialing my parents\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 phone number as each one whipped out her BlackBerry 8800, which was not to appear on the Verizon for another 50 years.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Will I get away with it this time?\u00c2\u00a0 Should I abort my diversion?
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Even before Mom inquired as to why I was late this time, I blurted out something like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was in chur-urch.” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Everybody should go to chur-urch.” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you want your son to go to heaven?” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What do you have against religion?” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why do you hate nuns?”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 All of these charges and questions, and Mom hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even turned on the heat. Was she doing a one-woman version of the good cop-bad cop routine?
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Fact is, she told me years later, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d become amused by my violent protestations in which I implied something was wrong with her if she objected in the slightest way to my church visits.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Up until her last years, we had a private joke in which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d ask, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why do you hate (fill in the blank)?” any time she criticized anything. If she were around today to listen to C-Span or to read opinion pieces about the Iraq war, I have no doubt she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Those people have probably just gotten out of chur-urch.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 During the past weeks I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve become addicted to C-Span, a public- affairs TV station originating in Congress. Each morning \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Washington Journal” features a guest, usually a member of Congress, who fields phone calls. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a Democrat, use this number; if Republican, dial this number, etc. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 No matter what Republican guest appears, Democrat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}