On being an Altar Boy at Sacred Heart Church

I'm not positive what grade I was in, but I'm guessing sixth or seventh. It was the annual drive to recruit for altar boys. I had three older brothers that all became altar boys, so this wasn't new to me. I didn't want any part of it. I wasn't a joiner. I didn't want to get up that early. I didn't want to get in front of hundreds of church goers. I didn't want to belong to a thing called St. John Berchman Society. But I thought it was predestined that I would have to sign up. Being the fourth of four sons, I figured I had no choice. It was expected of me. So . . .
We were trained by older altar boy pros. We were expected to learn the choreography and prayers and responses in Latin. After a few sessions we were supposedly competent. I had more than a few doubts that I was ready. But schedules were made, and butterflies took up residence in my stomach.
  From my personal experience I remember that it was difficult to not set the altar on fire when attempting to light candles with that eight foot long flame thrower. Too big of a flame caused sooty wax to drip on the altar cloth. That was a guaranteed way to piss off the nun in charge of altar cloths.
  I remember that I was usually assigned to weekday Masses at six in the morning. That was fine with me. Only a handful of old people showed up. Same ones every time. Serving Communion only took a couple of minutes. Dickie O'Neal played the big pipe organ and sang all the songs solo. My Mom would drive me to church every time. I remember those car rides still. At the same time every morning, like 5:45 or so, a commercial would come on the radio for Red Man Chew. That ad jingle is with me still. I guess the spot was aimed at factory workers heading to their jobs. The song was incredibly annoying, and it never enticed me to chew tobacco.
Monsignor Blecke expected a lot out of his altar boys, so I hated serving his Masses. He yelled at me after one Mass because I didn't speak loudly enough to suit him. I didn't tell him that my responses weren't loud because I wasn't sure what the hell I was supposed to say. Jeez! It's six in the morning Bud! It's hard enough to stay awake, let alone pay attention to an old guy speaking in Vaticanese. It was equally hard to ring those bells on cue. I got more than one dirty look from a priest for daydreaming instead of clanging those cowbells on time.
  Since I was an average altar boy at best, I never had to work a wedding, or funeral, or Sundays. There was one time though that stands out. It was a High Mass on Easter Sunday. Me and seven other guys got the job of 'Kneel on the steps and hold a big candle for an hour and a half'. It was a hot Easter morning and we had on the usual altar boy uniform. We had to kneel on the steps parallel to the Communion rail. We each held a wooden pole with a red glass candle holder on top. Three quarters of the way through Mass, Joe Hines started swaying back and forth. I watched him, hoping I was wrong, but I knew what was about to happen. Then . . . BAM! It was lights out for poor Joe. He was down for the count. There was no contingency plan for such an event, so we all just held onto our candle poles, stared at Joe, and tried real hard to not get horizontal like he was. Monsignor Blecke turned around because of the commotion, but he just rolled his eyes and went about his business. Finally Joe got up and staggered off to the dressing room. I felt sorry for Joe, but I was also pretty damn glad it didn't happen to me.
  Many years later I was talking to my Mom about the altar boy ordeal, and that I felt forced into doing it. She said, hell, she didn't care whether or not I was an altar boy. Jeez! I could have saved myself a lot of grief, let alone sleep, if I'd known she didn't care! I only did it because I thought she wanted me to. Although I don't consciously regret becoming an altar boy, I do find it interesting that I have almost completely blocked all that Latin from my memory. I can't recall hardly any of it, except . . . Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!