Detours from the truth

Like most youngsters brought up in a good Catholic home in the 1950s, I had my mouth washed out with Lifebuoy soap every now and then for using bad language.

I like to think I was not a foul-mouthed lout — rather just a kid who found it extremely difficult to say: “Oh bother!” or “Ouch!” when whacked in the nethers by a cricket ball bowled by an aggressive older sibling, in one of those backyard “test matches” played with only a bat, a ball, an old tomato box for wickets, and no protective equipment whatsoever.

After having my mouth thoroughly soaped, I made a point of raising my tendency to the odd pain-induced cuss at confession the following week. And thinking back on those days, something that endeared me to the Catholic faith from that early age was that the inordinately sympathetic Fr Bonner of the Monastery parish in Pretoria always asked me under what circumstances I had uttered the offending word.

I am convinced I heard him chuckle when I explained what had happened, and I always felt a lot better afterwards. I would certainly come away from confession feeling quite joyful, happy in the knowledge that I would not go straight to hell for my inability to grin and bear it when I got hit where it hurts most by a cricket ball. (Let me whisper that I also liked Fr Bonner because he had a motorbike.)

Of course we were also punished for lying. Telling fibs was frowned upon in our family, and considered a lot more serious than using bad language. Lying inevitably saw the horsewhip being brought out. Though I didn’t think about it at the time, there is nothing like a pair of painful welts on your bottom to remind you of the wages of sin every time you sat down for a day or two afterwards.

Interestingly enough, in spite of being the recipient of reasonably frequent corporal punishment at home and at school, I have not turned out to be a completely paranoid, social outcast with tendencies towards violent behaviour and all those other afflictions modern society is convinced will occur if one gives a child a smack every now and then. I loved my father dearly, in spite of his strict rules and penchant for horsewhips. I tend to go along with the “spare the rod and spoil the child” notion, though I know this may generate many letters to the editor pointing out how wrong I am.

In fact, when my youngest son was attending a Marist Brothers school some years back, he said that a poll among pupils showed that almost 90% wanted corporal punishment brought back. This was mostly to stamp out bullying and to stop a few badly behaved miscreants spoiling lessons for those who wanted to learn something. But lying, we were brought up to believe, had no shades of grey: it was either the truth or it was not.

I must admit, there was a time when I had to make an exception to this rule, ironically enough to prevent my parents from being embarrassed. Or was it I that would have been embarrassed?

Anyway, it happened when I was living in France, and my parents and aunt came to visit. We were all going to stay with my brother in his apartment in Paris. As we planned for their arrival, we had to come up with ways and means of explaining away the fact that sometimes the streets near my brother’s home were lined with scantily clad prostitutes.

We told my mother, father and aunt, all of them devout Catholics, that there was a convent nearby whose nuns liked to engage with society at large by exchanging their habits for civilian garb. It worked a treat, though it did leave a trail of bemused hookers with wide eyes and dropped jaws at being greeted jovially with “Good morning, Sister!” by a trio of effusively smiling geriatric foreigners.

Later, on our way by road to Lourdes, my brother and I were forced to tell my parents that we were taking a “slight detour” to see a really beautiful part of France, in spite of their insistence on it being late and wanting to get to their destination as quickly as possible.

The reason we made this “slight” (468km) deviation had nothing to do with a beautiful part of the country, but with the fact that by keeping straight on we would have had to pass through a charming French town with the quaint name of Condom.

Surely a just cause for a fib? If not, well then, what would you have done?