When I was little I thought that God made three days sacred, and I believed that nothing bad could happen on these days, total immunity:

1. Christmas
2. My birthday
3. Halloween

In pre-school I was routinely told that I was going to Hell by the Mormon children I went to school with and the ones who lived in my neighborhood. I remember not believing in Hell, but believing in God. Or some other deity. Something good. It didn’t bother me, but my brother was older and they’d call him a Catholic fag and assured him that he’d burn for eternity. They’d make crude, ugly pictures of him hanging from gallows surrounded by fire. My dad kept the pictures for a while. I found them pawing through a drawer when we were moving out of Utah and he was upset I saw them, he took them away and threw them in the garbage. I couldn’t process how awful they were because I was too young to understand religion based hate.

I was kicked out of pre-school because I called my teacher fat after she wouldn’t let me play with a Tigger stuffed animal.