Showering with Satan

Having grown up in a large family I learned early on the trials and tribulations of sharing everything. My parents were loving but pretty strict. They emphasized the importance of family, education and economy. It was my parents belief that we would develop stronger ties if we shared rooms and everything else. Accordingly we were paired up with a sibling of the same gender and closest in age. In my case, I shared a room, a bed, clothes (unwillingly) and even the shower with my little sister. We got along as most sisters do, with what my mom called “tiger” love. Loosely translated, we loved, and bickered, and laughed, and hated each other in equal amounts every day.

For most of our childhood we went to Catholic school and religion class was something I enjoyed very much. The majority of the classroom time was filled with high drama. Our young minds were fed highly-colored stories of saints, martyrs, miracles, heaven and hell. Being a very imaginative child with a flare for the dramatic, the class suited me to a tee. Each nun or priest had a different style of teaching – one nun was particularly good at capturing our imaginations. Her specialty was gory detail, and as a result her classes were very scary and fascinating. If you ever wanted to know how many whips the devil carried or how much pain a person could suffer in purgatory – she was the one to go to. She never tired of telling us stories and I absorbed everything she said with mouth wide open. As a result I was scared out of my pants about everything.

One story that really stuck to me was about “junior devils.” Junior devils spent their time on earth trying to turn you into one of them. They started out as ordinary people but became possessed by the devil because they had opened the door to evil. According to her, just about anything -- from being selfish, to not praying, to swearing to telling lies opened the door to evil. In the playground we discussed ways that we could tell an evil possessed person (junior devil) from a “good” person. We all agreed that a j.d. would not be able to handle holy water (sizzling would be a dead give away), would not be able to say prayers for longer than a minute and would definitely not survive in church without horrible pain. As a matter of fact, if you stared hard enough into their eyes you might be able to see hell fires dancing deep within. (That particular tidbit was my own concoction.) By the time I left 5th grade, I felt holy and pretty prepared to identify evil doers. I even had a little altar complete with bath crystal “incense” in my room to help me pray for the souls in purgatory. I wasn’t sure about the whole becoming a martyr thing, but I felt my perfect prayer hands and holy head position (eyes slightly lowered with faraway holy-thoughts middle distance focus) might help make up for that.

One evening as my sister started washing my hair it occurred to me that she was a classic no-goodnick, a sinner really, and thus was open to becoming a junior devil-- if she was not one already. But what could I do there in the shower? I couldn’t really check her eyes for hell fire (my own were closed tight against the shampoo) and would be unable to for at least 5 minutes. I had no holy water on hand to check the sizzle-factor and the shower was no church. What if at that moment she was thinking of ways to make me like her and take me to hell? I thought about my poor parents, and the hell fires as I searched through my mental catalog for ways to identify j.d.’s. Then I hit upon it… singing church songs. It was practically like being in church, singing hymns was like praying in rhythm. Quickly I suggested that we both sing one of our favorite hymns “Hallelujah” and we both began to sing. When she didn’t start shrieking out in pain, I knew we were okay. From that day forward, whenever it came time to wash our hair, I would begin to sing the hymn of the day and she would join in thus ensuring that Satan was not in the shower.

Having dinner with her recently we began to reminisce about the old times and I told her my suspicions of her junior devil status in the shower. She couldn’t believe that I had thought she was the devil. Junior devil, I corrected her and she got a little miffed then started laughing. It was dark outside so we got up, paid the the check, got in the car and started the long drive home. We were both quiet, a little too quiet… if you know what I mean… so I began to sing “Hail Mary.”