Part IX: Confessions of a Fidgeter

 Part IX: Confessions of a Fidgeter

Silence is Golden. Or so the saying goes. But fidgeters don’t see it that way. Sure, it’s ok with them if others around them are quiet, but they don’t seem to realize that their own noise is not “golden” to others. Case in point, me.

When I was in elementary school, I was always fidgeting, moving, finding reasons to get out of my chair, or just plain being active, even when just sitting in one place. You know, the boy who today is put on Ritalin. I was the kid who would tap his pencil. Incessantly. I thought nothing of it. If I was concentrating, I was tapping it. If I were bored (which was most of the time!) I would twirl it in my fingers, sharpen it, tap it, thump it, or at least roll it up and down the desk. I never understood why anyone else cared if I was doing it or not.

Then one fateful day, we were told that we had to start writing in pen. NO! How could I erase? But what a glorious day that turned out to be for a fidgeter! Stick pens were not much different than pencils as far as fidgeting with them goes, but a retractable pen? Jackpot! Oh, the fun of thumb movement and the joyful sound of click, click, clickety, click, click... For whatever reason, I could click that thing all day, and it is one reason I rarely use retractable pens in public even today! I could click it as I took a test, as I thought about what to write, as I listened to instructions (or at least pretended to), or twelve seconds after the exasperated teacher shouted, “Eddie, would you PLEASE (and not using “please” as a polite request, either) STOP CLICKING YOUR PEN!”

Fast forward to where I left off last week. As I explained, I was trying to be quiet quiet in the chapel, not just boy quiet. I managed to close the door as quietly as I could, genuflected, and knelt down at my spot. My prie-dieu is different from the Sisters’ prie-dieux. They have newer ones. I have an antique. The beauty of the carved wood makes no difference for this story, but the old, green velvet material certainly does.

As I had done multiple times each day, I knelt and placed my Breviary on the top, padded velvet part of the kneeler. But for the first time, I realized just how much noise the book made when I adjusted it by sliding it against the nap of the material. The pile, or nap, of the velvet is such that it lies down in one direction. It feels very smooth if you run your hand with the nap, but if you run your hand the other way, it lifts the bristles, very much like the Abominable Snowman petting Daffy Duck. (Hmmm...maybe I’ll name my prie-dieu “George.” Either you get it or you don’t.) Except that, for this fidgeter, the feeling of the bristling material was enticing enough to override the knowledge that it was making noise. “How much noise could it make?” you might ask. A lot more noise than the unavoidable but noticeable rustling of the Sisters’ habits whenever they move.

Oh, how often I had to scold myself on the first “quiet day” when I would realize that I was rubbing my thumbs the “wrong way” on the velvet as I was kneeling in prayer! I found myself transported back to elementary school, but this time I was both student and teacher. “Would you PLEASE (but not using this particular word and certainly not making a polite request as I chewed myself out) STOP MAKING RASPING NOISES WITH THE VELVET!”

But how? For years, I could fidget to my heart's content in the rectory chapel. As far as I know, Jesus never grew weary of the noise or constant movements I made. But here? I had to somehow train myself to be absolutely still. I tried using affirmations. “You can do this. It’s not too hard. You’re a big boy now,” I would tell myself over and over, even as I was subconsciously moving, adjusting, tapping, scratching, or otherwise fidgeting. Most of each Holy Hour for the next week or so was spent, not so much praying as concentrating on not doing everything that I was doing that made noise or could otherwise break someone else’s focus on God. 

I tried many things that should have worked. For instance, I knelt and clasped my hands together, interlocking my fingers so that they couldn’t skrrrchskerchskritch the velvet. But my fingers and thumbs acted like little schoolgirls who had just spent the day together in class, yet ran to embrace each other two minutes later in the car pick-up line, hugging each other with squeals of delight, jumping up and down, and laughing like they were long-lost friends who had just been reunited. My fingers interlocked this way, then that way; then the thumbs started wrestling; then the fingers unlocked and pressed flat against each other; and finally the fingertips started pressing against each other, pushing the rest of each hand apart, and looking, for all practical purposes, like a spider doing pushups on a mirror. All without my brain kicking in to stop such nonsense. Fidgeting can be distracting even if quiet.

I finally hit upon what I thought was a pretty good plan to stop even the silent finger figdeting. I placed both hands flat on the velvet with the Breviary in between them, separating them the way my mom had to separate my brother and me in the church pew to keep us from messing with each other as children. Palms flat. Check. Fingers Flat. Check. It worked! All was well.

Until I placed my hands a bit too far forward, and the middle fingertips bent down, and discovered that the board up front was loose...

And, wouldn’t you know it, the more I was able to get my external fidgeting under control, the more I realized that my internal fidgeting problem had grown stronger and needed to be addressed as well.

Later.

With prayers for your holiness,

Fr. Palka

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