IT'S BEEN TWO WEEKS SINCE MY LAST JOB

The last time I counted anything down by days or weeks was when I was a kid going to Catholic confession. For those of you who have never had the experience of attending Saturday afternoon confession, you enter a curtained confessional booth, wait for the priest of your choice to slide back the confessional panel (I mean really, should I call it a confessional panel? Why not a regular wood panel) and ask him to bless you because you have sinned and it's been three days, two weeks, two months, since your last confession.

Well, it's been quite some time since my last confession, but I'm not telling how long. I think whatever you do in life is a personal thing - whether you steal, commit adultery, chew gum in church, whatever - you know you've done it and so does the Almighty, however you view Him (or Her) or believe. Or not. Since politics and religion are a touchy subject, I'll leave it at that. I'm not about to make this a religious forum about what's right and wrong. Unless you're shizophrenic, you just know what you should and should not do, so deal with it.

Take for example a friend of mine who walked out of a music store with $5.00 more than he should have had in his pocket because the night cashier, a young college kid, really didn't know how to distribute change for a purchase. I know, because years ago, I was a cashier, and the way I was taught was start with the pennies, then nickels, then dimes or quarters, then the bills. This was the way you were taught in the days when the cash register didn't automatically tell you the change to give the customer, just the sale amount that was rung. You know, the days of when you actually had to use your brain, rather than electronics becoming the brain.

Even though this register actually showed how much change to give to the customer, he got it wrong. Anyway, when my friend laughingly started to pocket the money, I stopped him and told him that the $5.00 would come out of that kid's paycheck if he didn't give it back. It could also make the manager think that maybe this kid was trying to steal from the cash register, instead of thinking that maybe he didn't train him properly about the foolproof method of making change for a sale. My friend stared at me for a nanosecond, then turned on his heel, walked back to the music store, got the cashier's attention and handed him back the $5.00. Of course, I heard complaints for about three blocks how hanging out with me was turning him into a goody-two-shoes, but that's his problem. The point is, he knew he should have returned the money while he was in the store and he didn't. It wasn't an accident. That's different. If you find out that you're $5.00 richer because you didn't check how much change you received until the next time you look in your wallet, it doesn't count. That's an accident. Richer minus the guilt.

Okay, so what is it that one confesses on those Saturday afternoons? If you're a kid, you confess that you chewed gum at mass, or said a curse word ten times, or sassed your mother (I said this was when I was a kid. Nowadays, it seems sassing your mom or dad is sport for some kids). If you were an adult, that was a different confession. Anyway, after you spill the beans on your sinful life for the week, you pray the Act of Contrition (the "I'm sorry that I'm not perfect" prayer), the priest prays that let's you know you have been forgiven of your confessed sins. Then he assigns a penance that is in the form of repeated prayers. Like the Lord's Prayer ten times, or the Hail Mary prayer ten times or any combination of these and other prayers. If you sinned really badly (the adult stuff) you had to say a whole rosary, maybe even two. That will keep you busy for about an hour or more. I'm not sure if this was a way to be absolved, or a way of getting you to stop sinning that particular sin, since it takes a long time to pray a rosary. No, I don't know type of penance is given when you confess to the really bad sins, like robbing a bank, or murder. That you'll have to ask a priest about. I'm sure they receive confession training at the seminary and cover that topic. The only thing I do know is that the priest cannot reveal the confession, even to the police, and the priest can withold the act of confession or forgiveness from the person. The priest also requests that the person turn themselves in to the authorities.

So, the countdown continues. It's been two weeks since my last job. I don't know where the next one will come from; I do believe I will have one though. There is nothing like having hope and faith, even in the darkest of times. My confession is that whatever I have ever done that wasn't the picture of perfection is already known to the Almighty I believe in, and He still cares about what happens to me. And for me, that's what's important.