The road to becoming an athiest started in the fourth grade

We had a Japanese teacher called Mr. Yoshitaki and from what I remember we were a bunch of

little bastards. Not that we cursed him or anything like that but he certainly did not listen to

him at all. St Malachi being a catholic school would of course had religious teachings. On a few

occasions a nun would come and instruct us on the ways of the lord. This woman was odd in

more ways than one. First of all she was black, I had never seen a black nun in person and I

can’t recall ever seeing one again. The nun had a disturbing habit of smiling one second and the

next she would show no expression whatsoever, flat faced is what I recollect thinking.

The lesson she taught was your average god is great god is god and you have to be good to get

into heaven bit. I had heard it before but I was a good little Catholic boy so I listened intently.

One thing she mentioned has stuck with me to this day. As she was telling us there was the one

and only god and no other god. The nun went on to explain that a long time ago people

believed in many different gods like Zeus and Isis but they we all made up. Some kid asked was

god made up also and this black woman went pale. “No there is only God and he is real” is what

came out of her mouth. “Why?” some other little curious black child asked “Because we said

so” is what left her lips. That seemed very odd to me. Zeus,Horus,Apollo are made up fictional

god but the you believe in is real because you say so. That bothered me even then. You say

something is real and that makes it so. I was a good boy so of course I went along with the

program but I will also remember the nun and her very bad choice of words that started me on

the twenty year path to atheism. Months later little brother and I would have to leave St.

Malachi when for some reason my mother could no longer afford to send us to Catholic school

and I buried that incident for years.