Last night at Costco, the conversation turned to communion wafers (as it so often does with us). This triggered an early memory for me, one that I think explains a lot about the person I grew up to become:

When I was young, my mom went through a holy phase. She would drag our family to church every Sunday in a rather futile attempt to save our souls from eternal damnation, a move I see now as being just adorable. Our particular church was Anglican flavoured. I had long-assumed that we were suddenly Anglican not because of any deep-seeded faith but because it was a handy church to go to, but it turns out I was apparently baptized (bet you didn’t know that) in an Anglican church my dad used to go to in Montreal. Huh! How about that.

Anyway, back to this church thing. We’d go every Sunday, and eventually I started attending Sunday School. I don’t really remember any of it other than thinking I could totally be at home watching cartoons instead of drawing pictures of Jesus, but I do remember that sometimes we had special Sunday services and instead of crayons and holy fire, the kids would stay in the church proper to receive communion with the rest of the grownups. Fancy!

This particular Sunday was a communion one, and it happened to be my first. I wasn’t really sure what was going on and for some reason my parents opted to not give me any pointers at all, so I took what few visual cues I could get from the people around me. I stood in line with everyone else and one by one we were blessed, given a Styrofoam wafer of Jesus flesh, and a sip from the Chalice of Blood. One, two, three. Easy, right?

Well, no. For some reason, our church didn’t have a separate kiddie chalice to commune the underage with – so when it came time to drink of his blood, we were given actual wine.

Remember, I was 6 or 7 at the time. I bowed my head appropriately, received my sip of Jesus blood, and .. was immediately horrified by the liquid in my mouth. Unable to swallow it yet much too couth to spit out the blood of the saviour in front of the congregation, I quickly made my way back to the pew, fished out a Kleenex, and .. spat the blood of Christ into a napkin.

I still don’t like wine to this day.

Next time on Random Childhood Memories: 10-year-old Kimli goes to church wearing black leather pants!

Mmm .. sacrilegious.