lection.Your mother has to get you a new suit somehow so she can
show you off to the neighbors and relations and they give you sweets
and money and you can go to the Lyric Cinema to see Charlie Chaplin.
What about James Cagney?
Never mind James Cagney. Lots of blather. Charlie Chaplin is your
only man.But you have to be with your mother on The Collection.The
grown-up people of Limerick are not going to be handing out money
to every little Tom Dick and Mick with a First Communion suit that
doesnt have his mother with him.
Mikey got over five shillings on his First Communion day and ate
so many sweets and buns he threw up in the Lyric Cinema and Frank
Goggin, the ticket man, kicked him out. He says he didnt care because
he had money left over and went to the Savoy Cinema the same day for
a pirate film and ate Cadbury chocolate and drank lemonade till his
stomach stuck out a mile. He cant wait for Confirmation day because
youre older, theres another collection and that brings more money
than First Communion. Hell go to the cinema the rest of his life, sit
next to girls from lanes and do dirty things like an expert. He loves his
mother but hell never get married for fear he might have a wife in and
out of the lunatic asylum.Whats the use of getting married when you
can sit in cinemas and do dirty things with girls from lanes who dont
care what they do because they already did it with their brothers. If you
dont get married you wont have any children at home bawling for tea
and bread and gasping with the fit and looking in every direction with
their eyes.When hes older hell go to the pub like his father, drink pints
galore, stick the finger down the throat to bring it all up, drink more
pints, win the bets and bring the money home to his mother to keep
her from going demented. He says hes not a proper Catholic which
means hes doomed so he can do anything he bloody well likes.
He says, Ill tell you more when you grow up, Frankie.Youre too
young now and you dont know your arse from your elbow.
The master, Mr. Benson, is very old. He roars and spits all over us every
day.The boys in the front row hope he has no diseases for its the spit
that carries all the diseases and he might be spreading consumption
right and left. He tells us we have to know the catechism backwards,
forwards and sideways.We have to know the Ten Commandments, the
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