My mother in her babushka. I'm probably sitting there thinking, "What? There's a Satan? Put me back in, put me back in!"

I don’t remember how old I was, but I figure it was somewhere in the early elementary school years when I learned the concepts of heaven and hell in CCD, which is the strangely cryptic way we Catholics refer to our religious classes. Kind of like KGB. Except not at all.

I remember our teacher, Mrs. Teller, scribbling on the blackboard in the dim church basement that doubled as our classroom. She was compiling a list of behaviors that would get us into heaven, and which into hell. Now, I was a pretty good kid by most standards. But scanning Mrs. Teller’s list, I began to have some serious concerns about that time I threw my sister across the dining room table. To say nothing about that time I purposely kicked her in the vagina. Continue reading →