My last name, O'Lennaine is a Mudcat username, but my actual name is something equally Irish and points to a firm Catholic background, but my dad was abused as a child in the Catholic school system and when he married a practicing Anglican, they brought us up as, well, lapsed protestants, she being protestant, he being lapsed.

I have a clear memory of Sunday School at around age 7 or 8, wondering about how and why Jesus could possibly have died for my sins. I could not join the dots to make sense of it. At age 13 I got confirmed and tried really hard to seriously commit to what I was promising, but I knew deep down I was lying, and I felt fery guilty, but strangely, unafraid. (Not because I didn't believe in God, I did.)

When I was 30, I think, I had a car accident in which I nearly died. I survived by the slimmest of chances, and was left with no residual after-effects. I tried to make this a "Lo & Behold" moment, but once again I was unable to commit to the rapture.

I have noted similarly freakish occurrances at regular intervals, saving my bacon again and again, to greater or lesser degrees throughout my life, and am drawn to the inevitable conclusion that I live a charmed life, and that there must, presumably, be some reason for it, since so many clearly do not live such a life.

I have done nothing yet to warrant such consideration, and at 56 years of age, am beginning to wonder when it's going to happen and what it could possibly be. I see guys my own age retiring and basking in the glow of their achievements, and here's me still wondering what I'm going to be when I grow up.