Growing up in a protestant family in Ireland meant certain gaps in my knowledge of ‘the way to do things’ that most people born into the other tradition (as its euphemistically called) take for granted. It wasn’t until I left my all girls’ protestant boarding school that the reality of the statistic that I’d grown up with properly kicked in - less than three percent of Ireland’s population was protestant. On entering the real world (if you can call university the real world) I suddenly found myself in a more representative mix. Catholics AND boys (lots of them) to hang out with! Heady and interesting delights compared to the narrow confines of my social milieu up to that time.
More than once I had someone say to me that they had never met a protestant before. While this made me feel both exotic and alien at once it magnified an already nervous intuition that I would say or do the wrong thing when out and about with that other ninety seven percent of the population. The worst of the anxiety, not surprisingly, was in association with religious occasions of the catholic kind.
One such celebration arrived with its annual predictability about six months after we had moved in to a house in Dun Laoghaire in 1993. Our neighbour’s daughter was to take (to have?) her first communion. The savvy younger of my own two children had already asked about taking his first communion, his eye firmly fixed on the bounty he’d heard about. “How much did you get?” seemed to be the currency of the playground every May, a currency for which he didn’t have the right spiritual exchange. But the amounts were staggering to me. I’d heard that over two hundred pounds as a total take was possible.
If the tradition was to give money to the kid-next-door taking their first communion, how much money should I give? The parsimonious protestant in me was somewhat appalled at the whole concept of giving money to an eight-year-old as a reward for taking part in a religious act. I decided to get a gift and top it up with a small amount of money. The gift was bought but this made the money bit harder, as now I was going to be giving less than first imagined. The card and the envelope were ready. Five pounds seemed about right for a neighbour, but I’d already got the gift and was still struggling with the giving-the-money bit. Would three pounds be enough? I hummed and hawed. My catholic husband (who would know) was at work and would think the question daft. After much deliberation I went with the fiver reckoning that more was safer than less – like feeding dinner guests.
Once the gift and envelope had been delivered I was relieved that the thing was done. As the niggling worry died down, I thought about all the gifts and envelopes of money she would be getting and that ours would probably disappear into the general excitement of the day. Most likely she wouldn’t remember who gave her what or how much.
The following day I’d forgotten all about it until I noticed the kids together chatting outside our gate on the cul-de-sac, and an awful thought occurred to me: they were, of course, asking her how much she’d got. And if I had been foolish enough to stick with the three pound offering, she’d now be proudly telling everyone that she got two hundred and seventy three pounds, or some such amount ending in the number three. The game would be up. It would be obvious that one person had put in the cheapskate amount of three pounds, as the total was not a multiple of five or ten. And everyone would know that it had to have been the mean prod on the road. Lucky escape. Next time, no questions asked, the number would end in a zero. Or possibly two zeros, just to be sure.
© Alison Hackett, 05 January 15
More than once I had someone say to me that they had never met a protestant before. While this made me feel both exotic and alien at once it magnified an already nervous intuition that I would say or do the wrong thing when out and about with that other ninety seven percent of the population. The worst of the anxiety, not surprisingly, was in association with religious occasions of the catholic kind.
One such celebration arrived with its annual predictability about six months after we had moved in to a house in Dun Laoghaire in 1993. Our neighbour’s daughter was to take (to have?) her first communion. The savvy younger of my own two children had already asked about taking his first communion, his eye firmly fixed on the bounty he’d heard about. “How much did you get?” seemed to be the currency of the playground every May, a currency for which he didn’t have the right spiritual exchange. But the amounts were staggering to me. I’d heard that over two hundred pounds as a total take was possible.
If the tradition was to give money to the kid-next-door taking their first communion, how much money should I give? The parsimonious protestant in me was somewhat appalled at the whole concept of giving money to an eight-year-old as a reward for taking part in a religious act. I decided to get a gift and top it up with a small amount of money. The gift was bought but this made the money bit harder, as now I was going to be giving less than first imagined. The card and the envelope were ready. Five pounds seemed about right for a neighbour, but I’d already got the gift and was still struggling with the giving-the-money bit. Would three pounds be enough? I hummed and hawed. My catholic husband (who would know) was at work and would think the question daft. After much deliberation I went with the fiver reckoning that more was safer than less – like feeding dinner guests.
Once the gift and envelope had been delivered I was relieved that the thing was done. As the niggling worry died down, I thought about all the gifts and envelopes of money she would be getting and that ours would probably disappear into the general excitement of the day. Most likely she wouldn’t remember who gave her what or how much.
The following day I’d forgotten all about it until I noticed the kids together chatting outside our gate on the cul-de-sac, and an awful thought occurred to me: they were, of course, asking her how much she’d got. And if I had been foolish enough to stick with the three pound offering, she’d now be proudly telling everyone that she got two hundred and seventy three pounds, or some such amount ending in the number three. The game would be up. It would be obvious that one person had put in the cheapskate amount of three pounds, as the total was not a multiple of five or ten. And everyone would know that it had to have been the mean prod on the road. Lucky escape. Next time, no questions asked, the number would end in a zero. Or possibly two zeros, just to be sure.
© Alison Hackett, 05 January 15