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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 161wanted to attend the picture. The mailman had lost the film for a week, delaying the screening to the very last night before first-quarter exams. Where was the faculty%u2019s logic? First they cut our films from ten to six a year so the movies wouldn%u2019t interfere with our studies, and then they pulled a trick like this, forcing us to watch sentimental drivel when we should have been studying moral theology, physics, and German.I hadn%u2019t wanted to go to the movie because of studies and because the last time, some puling high-school boy had sat on the floor between the chairs with his back to the screen, holding his ears to protect his purity from Elizabeth Taylor in Ivanhoe. I mean I try to be pure, but some of these boys are ridiculous! I had to stop myself. I was thinking again. Or reacting. I had to stop reacting; that was childish. I would become a sane viable adult only when I began acting. Well, dammit, I had tried after the movie and received for my grown-up stand a paid religious announcement that it was time for night prayers. I hadn%u2019t wanted to see The Long Gray Line because of its sentimental reviews. I wasn%u2019t some stupid Danny Boy interested in a corny take on being Irish. Actually, I was twenty-two and in my ninth year at Misery, almost a year past college and well into the graduate courses in Misery%u2019s Theology Department, studying old-style Dogmatic Theology and Moral Theology and Canon Law. In Pastoral Theology, I was learning how to hear Confessions and how to say Mass. I was on to the last leg of preparation for the priesthood with less than thirty-two months until my Ordination Day.So much to do, I cried out to the Lord, so much to do before I was turned loose to minister to the world. Urgency and responsibility and insecurity drove me to study what they offered, to read what they didn%u2019t, to write continually the papers they didn%u2019t really care about.%u201cMisery%u2019s grading system is so strict,%u201d Rector Karg said, %u201cthat if you were studying anywhere else your grade would be ten points higher. Even at Ohio State.%u201dI tried to polish myself by writing stories and feature articles with which I could effectively extend my ministry to spread Christ%u2019s word and love on earth. So what, I said to myself, if priestly writing puts art at the service of religion. So do stained-glass windows and Gregorian Chant. Writing%u2019s purpose is goodness. Someday after some remarkable visitation of Christ, I%u2019ll actually have something to say. Something great and inspired and revelatory to help the world. Something just short of an epiphany or, maybe, an apocalypse. People always brag they have something to say, but when it comes time to say it, they take a pencil and go blank and