My father on Sundays would sit in a swivel reclining lazy-boy, his head bent back over the back of the worn lining covered cushion, his mouth ajar and his legs and arms crossed as though to ward off unwanted entry. I would sit with my brothers and sisters on the couch, with my feet barely reaching passed the edge of the seat.

This was all part of our post-mass Sunday afternoon. My father would grow irritated during the sermon watching a couple of his children misbehaving. Without the power to punish them on-site, he would subtly pinch them under the arm and usher them outside where they could cry without him being immediately implicated as the cause.

He would return just in time for communion, his child a sniffling model of obedience and his eyes flashing to his other kids signaling that they could be punished next. After he got his compressed, hypoallergenic bread, we would drive home packed our station wagon or rusting van. He would barrage us with threats and insults for misbehaving in church was stain upon both his and our characters. That for less than an hour, we should be able to show respect in the house of God.

Once we were home we would all sit with our hands on our knees, so that they wouldn't attack each other, as my father would say. Meanwhile, he would finish reading his paper until he got bored. Then we would play "Encyclopedia Roulette" where each kid, regardless of being literate or not, would choose a volume from his "Funk and Wagnall" encyclopedia and read it.

He was unemployed for six years while he was making babies with my mother. She told me that during that time he never rested and rarely ever watched television. I asked her what he did and she told me he memorized the encyclopedia.

Anyway, I would always choose the "S" volume to read. I immediately flipped to the articles on sexual reproduction, sexual development and sex organs. Even at a tender age my libido was in control.

While I would quietly laughed to myself and showed the rest of the room pictures of reproductive organs, my father would doze off to sleep. We always knew when he fell asleep because his thin pursed lips would loosen and his jaw would fall. One by one my brothers and sisters would sneak away, tip-toeing outside to play.

I, usually being the one that caused my father to loose patience with us in the first place would remain seated on the couch until my guilt faded and I felt myself appropriately punished for my misbehavior. So I would sit there, reading scholarly porn, listening the his snoring and asking myself if I still feel guilty. Besides my father's presence, not much has changed.