Choices - Part 2

As kids, we form beliefs and we learn things. We believe what we learn and we learn what to believe. Parents, schools, churches, governments and other authorities are the instructors. Sometimes their instructions conflict and sometimes they change. We also learn from the example of choices made by others and from choices of our own, both wise and mistaken.

I started public school kindergarten at age 4, and I don’t remember much about it, except some older kids being in charge of walking me to school and me being in charge of waiting on the school steps after school for a taxi to pick me up and take me to the restaurant where my mom worked. I remember one day having to go potty while waiting for my ride and deciding to use the bush next to the steps instead of using the school bathroom, for fear of missing my ride. In Kindergarten I learned that I have very little navigational ability and need to depend on guides or rides, or use a good map.

Mom chose Catholic school for my brother and me for the simple reason the School of the Immaculate Conception was only one block from where we lived and the nuns were nice enough to offer day care to a single mother. For eight years the nuns taught, indoctrinated and guided in the Catholic traditions. They set good example and encouraged accomplishment. Under their tutelage, I learned that I was smart, interested in learning, cared about other people and wanted to be a good person as measured by the Catholic religion. My main gripe about attending Immaculate was that we moved 16 blocks away and I ended up having to walk 32 blocks round trip to school for eight years.

Boys graduating from Immaculate went to O’Dea High. My small graduating class had a few exceptions. Three boys who had been bussed in from suburbia for a couple years went to high school out there, and the two African-American boys from the central area, including my best friend, moved on to the public Garfield High. O’Dea operated like a prison, which wasn’t as shocking for me as it was for some boys, since my step-dad ran our house the same way. Most of the Irish Christian Brothers were not good Christian role models. Unlike the nuns, who imbued Immaculate with a Catholic spirit, the Brothers seemed to regard religious instruction as something best limited to religion class and church services. O’Dea valued athletics more highly than academics, and I definitely was not athletic. By the 8th grade at Immaculate, I had discovered how much more interesting girls can be than boys, so the biggest disappointment at O’Dea was the lack of female students.

After one year at O’Dea I tried to make a choice to transfer to Garfield, where all the kids from my neighborhood attended, a group of boys and girls that I had been growing up with, diverse in ethnicity and religion, unlike the overwhelmingly white, all male Catholic student body at O’Dea. But as hard as I tried, Mom would not allow it. Academically, I envied boys who attended Seattle Prep, where the Jesuits embraced academics highly, but I never considered transferring to Prep an available choice. Stuck at O’Dea, I made the choice to do well academically, make a few close friends there, satirize the ridiculous disciplinary regime and think for myself.

A regrettable choice I made in high school years was not to get involved in the teen club at Immaculate Church, where girls from Immaculate High and boys from O’Dea could socialize. I was too lazy to do the 32 blocks again on evenings the teen group met. Lack of socializing with girls was painful, but I think those four lost years have made me more appreciative of the wonders that women are.

Two interesting things happened in my senior year at O’Dea. I was chosen for a group that attended some pre-college classes at Seattle University, and I chose to question that very basis of the religious instruction I had received for twelve years - the existence of God. The university exposure showed that instructors at the next level would treat students as young adult intellects instead of inmates. In the last year before releasing us to the world, O’Dea tried to train us how to handle religious sceptics, those who tried to undermine our religious beliefs by asking for proof. For me, the training backfired, because the sceptics seemed to have some very good points and I began to see religion in a different light, as an intellectual choice that one could make. Thinking for myself, turned off by the Brothers and the rigidity of many Church rules, and turned on by the university exposure and hormones, I chose to stop believing and to try to find out for myself what life was really about.