From Tabusintac to Tokyo

e taught by nuns. Women went into the convent presumably because they felt a vocation to spend their lives being close to God and serving Him in whatever capacity He deemed best. And the understanding was that they would be happy in the work He gave them.

We must have gotten the ones who didn't want to teach. You've never seen a more bitter group of people outside of the post office. Dressed in their black habits with stiff white bits around their heads, they stalked the aisles of the classroom armed only with a cloying piety and a yardstick (this being before the meter hit the schools).

Exuding a stench of disappointment mixed with the odour of starch, they instructed us in all manner of useful things like writing and reading and a few useless things like Catechism. Every week we'd get a dose of the superstitious drivel that made up the core of the religion we'd been born into. I'd sometimes feel overwhelmed by all the rules we had to learn about being Catholic. And the worst part was that, lik