I was enrolled in St. Agnes Seminary, a co-ed Catholic grammar school in Brooklyn and I'm told, at five years of age, just making the minimum birth month to qualify for the first grade. The Sisters of St. Joseph taught in that school, dressed in long black habits with a huge white starched bib-like thing covering them from their neck to the waist, from which hung long, large black, noisy rosary beads with a big crucifix that swung heavily as the sisters walked.

Usually the shortest toe-head in class, I progressed as a mediocre student, passing the Regents exams to the seventh grade, when all the boys were tossed out to make the school an all girls school. Sexist pigs. Just kidding.

During those seven years I went through all the requisite religious rituals and processions with hands clasped, looking obedient and angelic in knickers, white shirt and tie, usually at the head of the line leading the taller kids. I rarely had my knuckles rapped with a ruler.

Many of the same classmates remained together each semester, and I was glad, there were a few interesting girls in the class.

After that summer I attended St. Angela Hall for the eighth grade where I found myself the second shortest kid in the class. Cool. But the big surprise was the size of the girls. They were very much older looking, tall and giggled a lot. Several even jiggled a lot. Interesting. Many were very bright and got good grades.

Graduation came along and somehow I received honorable mention in two subjects, surprising my extended family in the audience, and myself.

High school was tough. Jesuits (?) ran St. John's Preparatory High School. I was a poor student, liked science but had a hard time with math and language. I was put on academic probation, flunked out, and then enrolled in Colby Academy also in Brooklyn. What a difference.

Colby was a private school above a luncheonette across the street from the infamous Erasmus High. Colby had a mixed bag of much older students, many WW II veterans on the GI Bill and Jewish kids, many of which were voluptuous young ladies. The teachers were good, especially the literature redhead, she connected with an ex-GI.

I joined the fencing, drama and projection clubs. I played Earnest in, "The Importance of Being Earnest."

Being urban, there was no space for athletics or an auditorium. My grades much improved, high grades in science, even did okay in French and Spanish and graduated without a ceremony in 1950.

Next was St. Francis College in Brooklyn run by the Franciscan (?) Brothers. More grade point ratio decline and another flunk-out after several semesters. Then St. Francis College in Loretto PA. And there was a girl's college a few miles away and a nifty chick in the nearby town of Ebensburgh. The school's pool table and my chartreuse Ford convertible didn't allow me much study time at the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity house thus I was tossed out. I remember driving back home with the top down and having to stop and break into my piggy bank to come up with the change for the toll to get over a bridge. So ended my religious education.

The draft for the Korean War was sucking away those of us who were too stupid to realize the value of a college diploma. After infantry training, a really dumb way to learn value, training in clinical lab techniques at Ft. Sam Huston in Texas, and twenty-five months on Okinawa working in an army hospital as a clinical lab technician, I became a real student in a secular university, went on to graduate school at NYU and earned a masters degree in parasitology.

Although my religious ed is responsible for much of how I've evolved, I've become an apostate, given up all interest in all religions as a result of 9/11, even as I age to when most folks grow closer to a god and derive comfort from god, religion and church. Throughout history the planet's numerous religions have been responsible for most of the planet's conflicts. Even now.