Are we the unforgettable characters then?
Yes!!!
I love your memories. Like Little Red RidingHood’s grandmother – “the better to see you with, my dear.” Ella, fighting with her sisters and dreaming of hell, little primary Barb having to sit with the big kids – really scary. And unbelievably, nlhome’s husband in the wrong grade? For a year? JoanP, thinking, “what did I do bad?”
Marcie, I agree, the grandmother is a bully, used to getting her own way. Jackie may be a bit of a mama’s boy -- at any rate, he seems to be echoing some of his mother’s complaints about her mother-in-law, the old woman whose ways embarrass both of them.
That restaurant sounds like a lot of fun, Barb, and one with a lot of atmosphere. I’ll bet you can wear old jeans and a t-shirt, too.
Interesting links about humor, especially the explanation of “situational” humor. Some of the folks I know are great joke and story tellers, and one of things they do is to personalize their story – even if it was something they read in Readers Digest. And it grabbed you by the lapels – “My daughter was telling about one of the teachers she works with . . . ., “Aunt Clyde was walking to work when . . . .” “oh gosh, the Johnsons were telling about their brother-in-law on his way to Texas . . .”
JoanP, I wondered too, about whether all O’Connor’s stories were based on memories of his childhood. Many, but not all, of his stories are about children. Richard Ellmann, the editor of my copy of Collected Stories (O’Connor) had this to say about O'Connor's writings in general:
“Detachment from his own country was not one of FO’C’s aims. Nobody was more aware than he of the mules, crows, and foxes . . . gazelles and doves who populated in human form his island home. His stories perserve in ink like amber his perceptive, amused, and sometimes tender observations of the fabric of Irish customs, pieties, superstitions, loves, and hates.”
O’Connor was an only child, and his memoir is entitled
An Only Child. His father ex-military, and also an alcoholic. His mother worked daily as a house cleaner and bore the brunt of her husband’s anger when he couldn’t have her wages for drink.
Are "First Confessions" still a terrifying element for children?
Somewhere online an Irish-American mom compared her son’s first confession with her early childhood confession experience.
“Everything is far more relaxed nowadays, compared to when I was young. Multiple Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s are no longer doled out as penance. Even the austere, wooden confessionals of years gone by have disappeared.”
And what does her son think? “Mom, will God tell Santa that I am on the “good” list now that I’m forgiven?”
