in related news, my kid high-fived a priest in church... twice.

So we're Catholic.  Probably negligent and poor excuses for Catholics, but Catholic none the less.  I suppose we are referred to as the "CEO" Catholics - mostly we attend mass at Christmas and Easter only.  I'm not proud, and I accept all blame for sure.  I don't even have a good reason for being such a slacker. I mean, growing up we went to mass every Sunday except when it was time to turn the clock back because my mom would always forget and we'd be all so excited she missed it.  I guess some of my slacking definitely relates to social anxiety issues that I've struggled with for years.  

Anyway, since they were old enough, our kids have attended religion classes, been baptized, received the First Holy Communion and been confirmed.  Brooke is currently in the grade to receive First Holy Communion, and she's learning the things she needs to learn before getting communion.  

One of the steps is that she has to go to confession.  She goes to the church and says a prayer then confesses a few sins to the priest.  I'm not sure how sinful a seven year old can be, but mostly she 'fessed up about hiding something under her bed instead of picking up, tattling on her sister, sneaking candy - you know, very sinful stuff.

Brooke's class had practiced confession prior to the actual ceremony with our regular priest, but during the actual event at the church, she ended up going to the helper priest guy, this really old priest from a different church in the next town.  Each kid does this individually - like, the parent doesn't go up with them to help or anything.  At the end of the confession, the old guy priest put his hand up over her head, like, I guess in the movement of saying a prayer over her or something.  It was definitely different than the way our regular priest does it.  She looked confused for a moment, then suddenly popped up out of her seat and smacked that old priest five.  Right there on the alter, in the middle of the ceremony.  She was all proud that she figured it out - thinking he was high fiving her for a job well done.

So, OMG.  Yep.  My kid had just proudly high-fived a man of the cloth on the alter.  So the priest looks all flustered, and is like, "No, no, no..." and puts his hand up to do it again, a little higher, out of her reach.  So she promptly stands up, jumps up (to reach his higher hand of course), and smacks him five again.  Like she was going for a jump shot in basketball.

It was awful -- it's not like we could go up and correct her.  Eventually she grasped the fact that he wasn't looking for some skin, her cheeks were so red you could see how mortified she was from the back of the church.  She is so easily embarrassed.

I wish I had a camera.  I probably shouldn't have laughed hysterically.  You know that shoulder-shaking kind of laugh, where you have to put your head down and sort of adjust your hair in front of your face so it looks like maybe, possibly you're crying?  That laugh that you cannot, for the life of you, control?  Unfortunately, I am famous for those particular types of fits in church settings. I seriously have an inappropriate laughter problem.

I'd like to think that God has a sense of humor.  But maybe I need to go to confession.  You know, just in case he doesn't.