i've said many times that the number one reason i am glad i was born here
and not in ireland was that i wasnt subjected to the irish catholic church. i survived 12 yrs of catholic school (which actually was good all around, and they didnt infect me w that bullshit.) and i end up here.
up until the other day, i was very sad that i am unlikely to ever have grands, despite having 5 kids. not anymore.
= new reply since forum marked as read
My public middle and high school experience was Lord of the Flies. I got tired of the abuse, got tired of the frequent beatings, and just quit going.
My sister was a similar misfit so my parents tried sending her to Catholic school. The school was okay with my sister, but they were not okay with my mom and her occasional holy wars against the church. My sister, who didn't like being in the middle of that family dispute took the GED a few weeks after her sixteenth birthday, passed it, and quit, blowing a whole semester's tuition. Shortly after that she ran away from home.
Curiously, it's my sister and I, the high school dropouts, who ended up with the very respectable university degrees. Our siblings who graduated from high school have two year associate degrees and other technical educations. It's possible they are happier people.
When my mom was young she wanted to be a nun. An encounter with a leering, chain smoking, hard drinking priest dissuaded her of that whereupon she became a Jehovah's Witness. Thus began my twisted childhood religious experiences.
My mom got kicked out of the Witnesses when I was in the fourth grade because she couldn't stay out of politics. After that we were Quakers.
The night before my Big Catholic Wedding my greatest fear was that it would turn into some kind of riot. I have this wonderful childhood memory of my mom confronting the local Bishop after he'd spirited a pedophile priest out of the country just ahead of the law...
My parents have only a few great grand children out of that big pot of Irish and Berserker crazy.
It's my own good fortune that I was inoculated against all anti-intellectual religion at an early age, possibly by exposure to the religiously insane.
