Guest blogger Caitlin O’Rourke is a member of St Bridget’s, Church, High Dudgeon, New Jersey. Caitlin is eight years old.

I always give up candy for Lent especially jelly beans which are my favorite and Flora does too and that’s what we always do and when Sister Mary Agatha said that maybe we ought to think about giving up being unkind to people and making fun of them especially teachers and I felt sorry for her because she looked sad and Flora said she thinks Sister had been crying and then Jimmy Pochowski said that teachers ought to give up being unkind to children for Lent and Sister told him he should have more respect and then Leonora the colored girl stood up on her chair and started singing that song which is R-E-S-P-E-C-T and she was wiggling her bottom around and everyone laughed and started to sing along and pretend to dance and sister got so mad she pulled Leonora out of the room by her arm and just then Father Florsheim came down the hall and he saw how mad Sister was and he must have told her something like go home and have a nap because she didn’t come back in the class for along time and Father Florsheim came in and yelled at us and said that we must be very bad children because we had made Sister cry and then we did feel bad because Father never gets mad at anybody ever and that’s the truth so we had to stay in for recess and write I will be kind and respectful one hundred times until our wrists hurt from writing so much and then me and Flora were waiting for a long time for Mom to pick us up from school like she is supposed to and we were the last ones waiting and Sister Mary Albert was cross and Mom didn’t come and finally Aunt Margaret picked us up and I could see she had been crying too and I knew that something else was wrong and I had already had a not very good day and Aunt Margaret waited until she took Flora to her house and dropped her off and she took me home and Mom was there and she was crying and then they told me that Grandma had died in the hospital and so I cried too and now I feel like Our Lord in the wilderness because Grandma was always real nice to me and when she laughed Papa said she sounded like a donkey and it made me laugh and once when I was sick she brought me a get well card that played happy days are here again when you opened it up and a bag of Tootsie pops and a miraculous medal which I wore every day since then and I got better real soon because of it so then when they asked me at school what I was giving up for Lent I said I was giving up Grandma for Lent and they didn’t know what I meant and I wasn’t going to tell them either because its none of their business especially Jimmy Pochowski who would only make fun of me anyway and next Thursday is Grandma’s funeral Mass and Mom says you can put flowers or something on the coffin and I’m going to put a red Tootsie Pop on there along with the miraculous medal and I don’t care what anybody says not even Father Florsheim.