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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 51Annie Laurie shook her head. %u201cThey%u2019re DP%u2019s, displaced persons.%u201d She tucked my last book into the suitcase.%u201cThis book?%u201d my father said. %u201cYou%u2019re going to be the priest, so you have to read everything, but won%u2019t this book get you in trouble?%u201d %u201cMaybe,%u201d I laughed. %u201cBut everybody%u2019s reading Grace Metalious. She%u2019s %u2018in.%u2019%u201d%u201cPeyton Place?%u201d my mother asked. %u201cIt%u2019s no different than Peoria Place. The stuff that goes on around here!%u201d%u201cHasn%u2019t it been condemned by the Church?%u201dI tried to act sophisticated. %u201cIt%u2019s not exactly on Rome%u2019s Index of Forbidden Books.%u201d%u201cPriests have to read everything,%u201d my father repeated. %u201cA priest has to do what a priest has to do.%u201d%u201cSome of your friends have read it.%u201d I snapped the latches on my Samsonite suitcase. If ever a movie is made about Misericordia, the lawns, the buildings, the trees, the classrooms, the gym, the chapel, the boys and young men, all should look the way Peyton Place looked in the movies. Perfect. Clean. Crisp. The idyllic Technicolor Hollywood set.%u201cEvery night this week, since New Year%u2019s, we%u2019ve had a houseful of company,%u201d my father said.%u201cRyan, everybody wanted to see you,%u201d my mother said.%u201cI think everybody did.%u201d I looked at her and she was tired from knocking herself out as a hostess. %u201cThis house was a solid procession of guests from Christmas Eve to New Year%u2019s.%u201d%u201cThe more people you see when you%u2019re home, the better,%u201d she said.%u201cYou need anything, son?%u201d Dad asked.%u201cI have enough to open a general store,%u201d I said.In the bottom of my luggage lay all my contraband: three bags of Annie Laurie%u2019s cookies, the extra books I could not resist, six 45-rpm records, and my shoe box. I pulled the suitcase to the floor and sat on the bed. I was beginning to work at the loopholes in moral theology. I couldn%u2019t explain to them my smuggling wasn%u2019t a sin, not even of venial disobedience, because it was no serious matter. This disciplinary, institutional rule was only penal law, not moral law. Lock and I had decided that. If caught, I would have to take the punishment. Simple as that. Despite Rector Karg always saying the better thing was to do the better thing.Besides, reading about the human experience was learning how to be a better parish priest. I could always easily skip the dirty pages, because somebody was always eager to point them out. Besides, all boys knew if