Wrong number #2

“For­give me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been thirty-six years, three months and nine­teen days since my last con­fes­sion. Yes, sorry about that. All I remem­ber is a dark tun­nel, a sud­den blind­ing light, and then a smack on the arse fol­lowed by a lot of cry­ing and howl­ing, and after that everything got rather busy. Funny how life hap­pens. Any­way, I’m here now, so let’s get on with it. I hope you’re tak­ing notes. I have been guilty of the sin of mur­der­ing next door’s cat by mak­ing it eat my Action Man when I was three years old; I have been guilty of the sin of sneak­ily read­ing my sister’s teen­age diary, though I think you could let me off with just the one Hail Mary for that par­tic­u­lar trans­gres­sion, since all I dis­covered was how dull my sis­ter really was and that she did noth­ing remotely sala­cious in her bed­room except listen to Duran Duran with the French exchange stu­dent; I have been guilty of the sin of stand­ing by whilst the other boys stuck the new kid’s head down the toi­let and flushed it, even though I had let him help me with my Maths home­work the day before. This is prob­ably too detailed, isn’t it? I’ll skip a bit, then. I have been guilty of the sins of avarice and of jeal­ousy, though I have put all those details into a seventy-six page doc­u­ment which I will send through to your E-Confessions ser­vice; I have been guilty of sloth, when I could be bothered; in my favour, Father, I have not often been guilty of the sin of lust, though I’m work­ing on that one … sorry? No, I don’t quite under­stand you. Could you speak a little more slowly, please? Oh, hang on, so this isn’t Dial-a-Confession? Yes, um, me love you long time too, but that’s not the point right now. I want to tell you all my sins. Pun­ish me? Why would you want to pun­ish me? I thought I would just say a few pray­ers and that would be it. No, no, I don’t want to sin, I want to have my sins for­given. Do you under­stand? I need absolv­ing. No, absolv­ing. You no spea­kee da Ing­lish, no? What do you mean, absolv­ing will cost extra because it requires spe­cial equip­ment? Really? Gosh, that sounds pain­ful. Is absolv­ing sup­posed to hurt that much? Hello? Hello? Are you still there?”