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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 211Blue sheet lightning crashed off in the night. Hopefully a bit to the west, over the Iowa plains, striking the birthplace of Rector Karg, and burning it down. Misericordia didn%u2019t give an inch for any bent to the normal adolescent crises of the very adolescence it protracted. I was shocked at my physical boldness. I had never seen myself naked. Even as a metaphor. Oh Jesus! I was no Dryden! I waited for lightning to split the hot humid night air, lighting my body, finally hearing thunder roll in from the flat Illinois plains and prairies toward the third-floor attic of the parish house at 63rd and Cottage Grove and the spoom tilly in the darkest meanest part of Chicago doggley bedeep where the main difference between me gaspoom toggleyand the black folks was that I could leave the ghetto any time I wanted. %u201cLullaby of Birdland. Doo wah doo.%u201dSeptember 5, 1963A few days later, I dared myself to return, despite Karg, to spite Karg, to Misericordia to begin my eleventh year.%u201cYou came back,%u201d Karg said. Check.%u201cGod told me to,%u201d I said. Checkmate.%u201cThe clock is ticking,%u201d he said.%u201cDo not ask for whom the clock ticks,%u201d I said.My summer masquerading as a worker-priest in Chicago fascinated Lock. %u201cHow can I now regard myself?%u201d I asked.%u201cWhat possessed you to come back?%u201d Lock asked.%u201cHow do you regard yourself?%u201d%u201cYou might have disappeared bongo-bongo into some neat, beat Chicago writer%u2019s garret.%u201d%u201cI disappeared years ago. I%u2019m trying to reappear. That%u2019s the point. I haven%u2019t been seen in years.%u201d%u201cThen why come back here?%u201d%u201cKarg was betting I wouldn%u2019t. Nobody can use my vocation against me.%u201d%u201cKarg can.%u201d%u201cNo one can use my purity of vocation or purity of intention against me.%u201d%u201cHe does treat you strangely.%u201d%u201cI came back for perspective.%u201d%u201cThe only perspective here is Ordination, and getting picked up by a progressive bishop in a liberal diocese.%u201d