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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 167vacation I thought I%u2019d procrastinated long enough to have committed at least a venial sin of omission.%u201d%u201cDon%u2019t be scrupulous, boy, finding sin where there is none.%u201dFor an older man he had a fresh tone for a priest.%u201cThis is March.%u201d He lit a cigarette. %u201cMarch first. March fourth. March forth. A month whose dates are a command to go forward.%u201d He exhaled clouds of blue smoke. %u201cAnd March 17, the day for driving snakes out of Ireland.%u201d %u201cI have made progress. I%u2019ve meditated and thought and prayed a thousand hours to get where I%u2019ve gotten. I care about people and about God and I%u2019m hurt because so many other people here don%u2019t care at all. About anything. I%u2019ve written editorials about apathy in seminary life. That went over big. Rector Karg screamed at me that I might be the editor, but he was the rector.%u201d%u201cPriests and seminarians don%u2019t like criticism.%u201d%u201cI wasn%u2019t being critical. I care. That%u2019s all. I see this tremendous sense of social responsibility. Don%u2019t I have a responsibility now to awaken seminarians the way later I must awaken my parish? We all need to care. I don%u2019t think most people realize their potential for caring. They never stretch their lives.%u201d%u201cYou know your potential?%u201d%u201cNot yet. I%u2019m discovering it. Pushing the sides out farther and farther. It%u2019s...%u201d I stopped because the Reverend Sean O%u2019Malley, S. J., didn%u2019t act as if he understood.%u201cWhat?%u201d%u201cOh, convoluted, involuted, upside down. Nothing%u2019s either black or white to me any more. I see an awful lot of gray. I see meanings to life, and double meanings to everything, and the meanings have been so hard to come by that I want to explain them to everyone else.%u201d%u201cThrough Christ.%u201d%u201cOf course. He was a worker. I want to create and run before the wind. I want children. Not my own. Not just the selfish satisfaction of one child. But hoards of everybody%u2019s children. And everybody.%u201dHe chain-lit another cigarette. He said nothing.%u201cI%u2019m sorry,%u201d I said, %u201cthat I talk to you like this. Without any preface. But I talk this way to my closest friends. We had to learn to counsel each other.%u201dHe looked hard at me. %u201cI%u2019ll not be saying anything bad about my predecessor.%u201d