I cannot speak too highly of confession. Right now I’m feeling good. My eight year old daughter had her first confession tonight. She’d been running a 102 degree fever all day and I told her she didn’t have to go and we could reschedule but she insisted. She said it was important to her. I was hoping she’d say that.

So my wife and I took her. She took it all so seriously and was so wonderful and afterwards I asked her how she felt and she answered “Sick and holy.”

It still amazes me that this little baby I feel like I just brought home from the hospital is capable of humor and wit.

So I went to confession as well. Now normally I must admit I go to a nearby parish for confession because our priest is a family friend. Look, I know it’s ridiculous and it’s not like I’m admitting that I have dead hookers in the trunk of my minivan but still it’s difficult for me to confess to someone who I mock for being an Eagle’s fan and having graduated from Villanova.

I like confession the old fashioned way. In the little dark room behind the curtain where I’m talking to a shadow. I feel comfortable with that. But our priest did the sit right out there in a chair and we confess right in front of him.

But man. The feeling is great to confess all your sins. Because there were tons of kids and family members I tried to give the short version of my transgressions. One particular sin came to my mind that I couldn’t articulate easily. Here’s what happened. A mother had come up to me at the mall fairly recently. I had all five kids with me. She had one. A little boy about my boy’s age. She gave a snarky comment out of the blue that I needed to get a hobby. At first I didn’t understand. But then it hit me that she was talking about my kids. I pretended to laugh a little.

Then she starts asking ages and my kids all pipe up at the same time with names and ages. Then this woman looks at me and says, “You’ve got to be crazy.”

I’m not kidding. She said it. And then she segues with saying that her little boy is her first. Now my boy is pretty tall and speaks pretty well for a two year old. She says her boy just turned two and she asks how old my boy is.

And this is my bad part. I say he just turned two as well. The truth is he just turned two about nine months ago. So this woman is looking at her tiny kid and comparing them. My boy then says how old he is and starts talking pretty well. She’s shocked that he’s speaking as well as he is for a boy that “just” turned two. She asks me if he’s potty trained and I out and out lied. I said, “Sure. Has been for months.”

Like I said this is the biggest lie ever told because at this point I’m pretty sure my boy will never be potty trained. We sit and chat and read books in the bathroom and he just loves the attention but him actually doing anything is just out of the question to him.

So there it is. In my confession I put this under the file of losing patience and lying and I hope I’m covered.

But anyway. I’m a huge fan of confession. Right now I am just one big fat tabula rasa of the soul. I’m practically Mother Teresa without the whole helping of the poor thing. (I am very patient with little stinky boys though.)

It’s sad to me that I don’t hit confession more. And it saddens me that so many Catholics don’t consider it important either. I think priests should make a full court press on this sacrament.

I mean right now if that bus sized satellite crashed into me while I was taking out the garbage I’d be sitting pretty. Oh yeah we blew that thing up so that’s not going to happen. But I’m going to try not to sin until the next bus sized satellite fails and crashes to Earth. And I think I’ll be pretty successful unless I meet that woman at the mall again.