La Confesion

Today H told me one of those anecdotes I love. 
This is Latin America over 4 decades ago. He was about 13 and his sister about a year older.

He's in church and, for some reason, maybe an unspoken dare, he decides to take communion without having confessed.  As I understand, nowadays one can take communion if one has done some sort of interior confession, contrition, reconciliation (correct me if I'm wrong).  Back then, though, communion could only be taken after a real confession with a priest.  Both Confession and Communion are sacraments, and these things have a proper order in the Catholic Church.

H was starting to question the rules after years of being subjected to the strict discipline of Catholic schools.  One of the things he has mentioned to me many times is that even Sundays - early early - he had to trudge across town to school to attend mandatory mass (and that, after a half day of school on Saturday).

So, this one time he gets up in church to take communion without having confessed, and he remembers his older sister asking him -maybe hissing at him loudly because she was sitting in another row, "Did you confess?  Did you confess?"  

Why do I find it so fascinating?  Is it the evidence of a kind of innocent Catholic faith combined with the whole sibling squabble... I can strongly relate to the latter but not the former.  I see H being maybe a little nervous about his decision.  Why else is the moment still clear for him? I can't put it into words.  OK - I'll just accept that very few people will find this interesting, but I tried.