Caitlin O’Rourke Writes

It wasn’t my fault because Jimmy Pochowski was calling me ‘Fatty Catty’ like he always does every single week at First Holy Communion classes, and how did I know his mother was going to take a picture of me right at that time, and I didn’t mean it anyway even though it looks like I did because I wouldn’t do that now would I, I mean, do something mean like stick out my tongue and really mean it even if Jimmy Pochowski is always being mean himself and he thinks he’s so great just because he goes to the gym and does boxing I could beat him black and blue in the boxing ring myself because I fight with my brothers all the time and one time when I was fighting with Seamus he actually started to cry even though he is twelve and he wouldn’t tell me where I kicked him, but it must have hurt real bad because his face turned blue and you know I wouldn’t have been mean to Jimmy on purpose because we were all lined up to go into church for First Holy Communion and I had that rosary and holy card and everything and they would have kept me from really meaning it, and even if I did mean it I made a perfect act of contrition before Mass, at least I tried to, and I told God and the Blessed Virgin that I would try harder not to be so mean and not to talk back to my Mom, and to say my prayers at night, and anyway, when he came back from Holy Communion Jimmy Pochowski looked at me and smiled and think he meant it and that’s because he was in a state of grace and so I said to God that I wanted to be in a state of grace too so I think I was and the party after was very nice and I had cake and presents and Aunt Anne gave me a statue of baby Jesus with a crown on and my cousin gave me six red hot atomic fireball candies he said it was because of my red hair and everything else was nice except Uncle Bert kissed me and I don’t like his beard very much but they have a dachshund named Gus who is cute and he had a batch of puppies once even though his name is Gus.