Some
hoary and perhaps whorey old readers may well recall that yours truly
will happily admit to being a former altar boy (what can I say? I was
young and I needed the money). But joshing aside, I was indeed an
altar boy as a youngster and what's more, I even read at Mass, but
only on week days; you had to work your way up to a reading at Sunday
Mass you see.
One
day, the priest came into the school. It was around the time that
the Soviets had first got themselves embroiled in Afghanistan at the
end of the 70s/early 80s. Solidarity was just kicking off in Poland as well –
so when the Canon swept imperiously unannounced into the classroom,
we all dutifully got to our feet and chorused 'Fáilte romhat a
Athair' (Welcome Father).
Once
he'd magnanimously motioned us back to our seats, he waited a moment
or two to let the fidgeting and foostering to die down and then he
asked.
'Children,
do any of ye know what a communist is?'
Now,
it may or not surprise readers to know that right from the get-go
I've been something of a voracious reader (and an insufferable
know-it-all to boot) so I had recently read some newspaper article
about Karl Marx and duly parrotted what I remembered; about how he
had written the Communist Manifesto and that he'd said 'Workers of
the World Unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains'*.
Maybe
I imagined the look that passed between my teacher and the priest but
I never had to read at mass again.
*Pedant
Alert: I know now of course that this is a poetically popularised
English translation of the original 'Proletarier aller Länder
vereinigt Euch!' - Workers of all lands unite.
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