When my brother and I were approaching our teen years my mother decided that it would be a good idea for us to become altar boys at St. Mary’s Catholic Church. Exactly why she thought this to be a good idea I’m not real sure. A desperate attempt to save our souls perhaps, or maybe it was simply a way for her to wash her hands of us for an entire hour one day a week. If the latter is the case I’m not sure that the grief she put up with to get us to church was worth that single hour of freedom, but I could be wrong.

Whatever her motivation and reasoning was there was no way out of it and the job of transforming two knuckleheads into altar boys fell to the Busch boys. They were a little older than us but I’m pretty sure Jarvis and I had already managed to fall further from grace. Despite our general propensity to be disruptive and disorderly we were good students of the cloth and the Busch boys had us properly ringing bells, genuflecting, and lighting candles in no time. The lighting candles is what hooked us…fire is such a temptress.

Thus began our pious careers and thus began our relentless Sunday morning whinefests. The whining and complaining would begin the instant we heard, “Go get ready for church boys.” All hopped up on Frankenberry and Count Chocula we would rant and rave like lunatics while our mother would attempt to ignore us. She had an exceedingly high tolerance for our displays of disproval but being overachievers we could generally push her past the snapping point.

I always knew when she was approaching that point and would give in and accept the fact that I had altar boy duties to attend to. Jarvis, on the other hand, either didn’t notice mom was teetering on the edge of sanity or didn’t care, and would carry on until she was in teeth gritting mode or beyond. Mom spoke to us through gritted teeth quite often. Gritted teeth…wild eyed…the whole transformation was effective in scaring the stupid out of me for a good minute or two but Jarvis was more resilient. I think it encouraged him…he’s more of a thrill seeker than I am.

Once round one came to a close and we were both dressed for church, round two would immediately commence. Round two generally consisted of a last ditch standoff where Jarvis and I would proclaim that we weren’t going as mom headed out the door to rev up the Ford Econoline. We would stand steadfast in the entry way while the van roared to life. Then mom would honk. I always gave in on the first honk and shuffled on out. Besides, if I went out first I would get to ride shotgun.

Jarvis, ever the antagonist, would hold out for a couple honks and wouldn’t come out until mom had finally had enough and decided to leave him. She would start backing out and he would come out slamming the door, kicking gravel and muttering. Muttering bible verses I believe.

Then it was off to St. Mary’s where we would push and shove each other down to the basement to change into our altar boy garb and then push and shove each other up the stairs to play with fire and ring some bells. Mom settled in for her hour of solitude with our little sister Amanda kneeling close to her side. Her little hands clasped tightly together and eyes squeezed shut, praying for a bolt of lightning to strike her brothers down sometime before next Sunday.