My First Kiss and The Catholic Church

Do You Want To Know A Secret?

I grew up in Philadelphia. North Philadelphia. It was the riots of the 60's and the drug use that scared my dad into moving to the suburbs. But it was in Philly on Lawrence St. that I got my first kiss. Actually, it was next door at the Martinez home and it was much more than a kiss.

Betsy, her younger sister Anna, and her younger brother Cookie, lived next door with their much absent mother and almost nonexistent father. I remember my brother and I are spending a lot of time at their house watching Saturday morning cartoons, especially the Beatles cartoons. The year was 1965. I was eight years old and Betsy was probably a very streetwise, precocious nine. She used to mesmerize my brother and I with these wild stories about life in a Catholic school.

There are two stories that stand out and they both involve punishment. Betsy told us that when you disobeyed the nuns, they would take you to the bathroom, kneel you down in front of the toilet, push your head in it and flushed it a few times. That was if you were bad. If you were really bad the second form of punishment involved disrobing. Betsy said the nuns would make you take all your clothes off and stand in front of the classroom naked while everyone laughed at you. Oh, it was true! Betsy had been made to do this a few times. My brother and I would look at each other, mouths wide open and be very thankful that we went to public school. These stories, along with a very scary experience with a nun, would for years instill in me a deathly fear of the Catholic Church.

One evening when I was seven years old there was a knock at our front door. I believe we were expecting company. It was night time. I went to answer the door. Not recognizing the dark figure in front of our door, I hesitated. Well, the figure pressed her faced on the glass portion of our door and smiled. Normally this would have been no problem. It was just a nun in her black habit. But that's not what I saw. I saw the devil in the flesh smiling at me. I turned and did Scooby Doo-run-in-place move and ran screaming through the house. I still tremble when I see a nun. But I digress. Back to Betsy.

Like I said, she was a streetwise, very mature (how mature can you be at nine years old?) girl. One of the popular songs on the radio at the time was the Beatles "Do You Want To Know A Secret?". Well, Betsy used to entertain us by lip-syncing the song (this was before karaoke) all the while bumping and grinding like a well-trained burlesque dancer. This would lead the four of us to sneak into her house and played "married". This was no problem since no one was ever home. I'll spare you the details of our escapades but it was much more than a first kiss and I would spend the subsequent five or six years asking God to forgive me for my juvenile indiscretions.

Those "married" games ended when my brother decided to show the entire neighborhood he was a man (at 7 years old) by standing buck naked in front of Betsy's bedroom window. My parents were not impressed. We moved the following February to the suburbs. In the coming years anytime my brother wanted to get back at me, he would start humming the beginning of "Do You Want To Know A Secret?". Betsy and all the guilt associated with that time would come rushing back. "Shut up Dave! That's not funny..."

U's advice: always know where your young children are at all times.
Now, for those of you too young to remember, I give you the Beatles.