Church was very conflicting for me when I was little. Sometimes I liked it and sometimes I hated it.I’m probably going to Hell for writing that. Every Sunday morning my mother would brush my blonde hair and my father would call it gold. Then I would put on my pretty purple velvet dress and a very pretty hairpiece. Then we would all, smelling like soap, pile into the car and drive to church. Our church always had this sort of snack time before the service, a crafty way to bring people in. They would have powdery doughnut holes that Jack, my little brother, would get all over his nice jacket, and hard little cheeseballs. They also had watery fruit punch for the kids and coffee for the adults. All the old ladies would gather around me, pinch my cheeks until they were as red as their nails and call me a little angel. I did not like it when people would call me little. I would stand there, my nose tickling from the old lady perfume, until my dad rescued me and carried me on his shoulder to Sunday School. Albert Einstein once said that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.” Then Sunday School was the crazy house. Every Sunday, I would sit there in chairs made for my little legs and stare at the board, as a female robot would teach us about Moses, and Joseph and how Joziah was the son of Eukariah over and over. One day, I asked about the dinosaurs. She gave me a lot of vague answers with none of them answering my question.That particular question was not in the teachers memory bank on what children were supposed to ask in sunday school.

After that, I got to go to the adult service. I guess I was kicked out of Sunday School when they saw that I could think for myself. It was as boring as watching paint dry. Actually, when they got one of the walls repainted, that was what I did to pass the time as the pastor would drone on and on. Then I started to notice things. My brother was four now, and he was expected to act all nice and normal. Only he wasn’t. This was before the medicine and the therapist and the understanding. The old ladies who pinched my cheeks and called me a little angel started to glare at Jack like he was the devil though he wasn’t doing any harm. They started to sort of shun my mother because she couldn’t control him, and my brother because he wouldn’t control himself. My father, while my mother would wrestle Jack into the corner until he calmed down, would sit there on the velvet lined bleachers called pews, with the choir as the cheerleaders and the pastor as the quarterback. He loved to sing hymns. One week, we stopped coming to church. I think my mother finally had enough of the stares and the whispers.


When school started, my mother and father worked until four thirty, so the bus couldn’t drop me off at home after school. Even if it did, I would have had problems unlocking the front door anyway. They decided to have me stay at the church with other kids, so I would be safe and watched over. If only they knew how wrong they were. It was called Sunbeam Station, which is ironic because most of the kids that go there can’t wait to choo-choo on out of that dark and dreary place with the echoey halls and the broken toys.The room that they kept us in reminded me of a dungeon, with cold gray floors, gray walls and metal chairs. Even the light streaming in was pale and melancholy.

The most popular toys were the cloth dolls that some nice lady had stitched for us and the jenga blocks. The worst part of it was the kids. They were the brattiest, most diabolical little kids I have ever met. They would make fun of me, take my books, tell me that no one liked me, and leave me out of everything. Thank god they didn’t take my snack but that was because the snacks weren’t good at all. The only day I was popular was when I brought in cupcakes for my birthday. Then it got worse. There was this little girl that had it in for me and my book reading habits. The old bullies had all moved on but that didn’t stop the little kids making my life a living, well, you know. She liked to throw mulch in my face when we were out on the playground and pinch at any skin that was showing on my arms. Then, she laughed, her mean eyes lashing out at me like knifes, when my eyes started to water and turn red. I longed to crack, I wanted to crack so that she would know what it was like to have her self esteem shoved in the dirt and to be left in the corner with only a book and a cobweb for company. But unfortunately she was younger and we were at a church. I also did not want to become a bully myself. There were some kids that were okay, but like always, the minute somebody would have to pick teams, I would be the last kid standing, with a novel in my hand and a wry grin smeared across my face. The kids would sometimes ask, Why are you smiling? and I would just sit there smiling, knowing that they with their high pitched voices would not understand the joke.The fact is that while for six years I was being bullied and being isolated, there were two huge portraits of Jesus, who taught humanity about love and understanding, staring down at us. This little ironic joke kept me sane. Well, mostly.
So, after six years, I got out of that black little abyss of misery I planned not to cross the doorstep of that particular church ever again,even if I was dying of starvation, and there was food in there. It probably would have been cheeseballs anyway. And I lived happily ever after.