I'm an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt.

Edna O'Brien couldn't have put it any better. Irish Catholic guilt - it honestly never fails. I just came upstairs from supper and this is how the conversation went:

Papa: Aren't you going to have any of my homemade chicken?
Me: No, I'm gonna pass on that. I'm not feeling too well.
Papa: I spent hours making that chicken for you and you don't want any? And you weren't even here when we said grace! A heathen who doesn't eat chicken? Who ever heard of such a thing?

If you're interested, I ended up eating some of that chicken, which surprisingly enough, wasn't even homemade; it was a rotisserie chicken! I will forever be held to this guilt trip that includes just about everything you can imagine. The strength of this thing has lasted centuries and will continue to get stronger and stronger. The only time I have ever legitimately lied to my mother was at the age of 10; it was about going to see a movie I had already saw with my friends or something. The worst part about it was she never brought it up but it was completely obvious that she knew. Instead of vocalizing her conclusion, she instilled a fear in me of ever lying to her again and continues my never ending guilt trip.This, of course, goes hand in hand with that colossal fear of God and anything related to the Church. My first confession was just a flow of everything I had ever done, from stealing a pencil from some jerk in Kindergarten to saying God's name in vain.

This was all brought on by James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I advise ya'll to read. It is the perfect description of that good ol' Irish Catholic guilt.