Confession is good for the soul and the sole...

When I was a little "Skeeter" kid growin' up in Dayton, Ohio and growin' up in the Catholic church there, one of the obligatory duties of a good Catholic boy was to go to confession every Friday with your elementary school class and of course under the watchful stern eyes of the nuns.

Although it made me a better person and it also made me kind of a "clever" person if you will....kinda along the lines of the "Artful Dodger" and sadly if you don't know who the Artful Dodger then I suggest during this time of searching for things to do, you add all of Dicken's classics to your reading list.

Back to my confession...

Confessing was simple...as your turn came up and as your entire class watched, you walked into a little box and told the priest who was listening there and waiting to absolve you of your sins and let him know all of the bad things you had done all week.

I wasn't necessarily a bad kid so sharing my weekly exploits  and throwing in a few "white" lies that I'm sure the priest didn't care one way or another wasn't nuthin'. And then adding a couple of "impure" thoughts as I got older and then, well a couple of um, uh..let's just call it some events of a young boy kinda exploring and learning about himself as he was approaching puberty. So, all in all, like I said it wasn't any big thing.

The hard part though was going back to your pew and saying your penance. For you non-Catholics, that's the part where you have to say prayers to finish the absolution of the sins. It wasn't saying the prayers, it was the timing. And how long you spent on your knees asking for forgiveness.

Oh, the nuns knew me for sure. They knew most of what I did and how often. So I always had to be careful not to spend too much time praying afterwards, so if it didn't register that the sentence didn't match the crime,  then maybe I needed some more whacks on my knuckles with their "ruler wrath" and on the same note, I couldn't jump up after just a few minutes on my knees even though they were hurting, because they figured, "Yep, that Skeeter boy didn't confess ALL of his sins, particularly those "impure actions" and they figured that would call for more "ruler wrath"... I guess it was kind of a lose-lose situation for me and a win-win for them.

Now, fast forward to 60 some years later and the whole purpose for this background on my confessing. Yep, I got something I need to unload on all of you.

This morning as I was getting some stuff out of my closet for a morning of swimming at my pool, I was holding my flip flops kind of under my chin as a few items began to fall from the closet shelf.

Something smelled like it had died in the closet and as I sniffed around I realized it was my nasty-a** old smelly flip flops. These things were at least 35 years old and had been my walking support through beaches, creeks, and swimming pool entrances as well as ingrown toe-nails, bunions and an occasional nail fungus over the years. Yep, they were nasty.

So, my confession that I am throwing out to all of you is that, well, just maybe I haven't been taking as good as care of myself as I haven telling you. Obviously, I still got some house cleaning and grooming that needs my attention and I'm working hard to get that part in order.

I take very good care of myself, I eat properly and usually tie my shoes and keep my zipper up when I leave the house. But wow, I think I need to get some new flip flops.

I do need to quit callin' them thongs. I did get the weirdest of looks this morning when I was sharing this story to some friends here at the "home" when I mentioned my thongs were getting kinda smelly. The friends here looked confused since they thought all I wore was a Speedo and didn't wear a thong.

Anyway, just another day here at my "home".

Peace