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We were all Catholic school kids. Some of us got thrown out, but it didn’t stop our families. We still had to go to Mass on Sunday. And the statue with the Christ on the cross and the Blessed Mother, every time we passed that, no matter what, we would bless ourselves.

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This was our church, this was our parish.

It was hard being in Catholic school when I was a kid. The nuns were tough, the brothers were tough. I didn’t like it at all. They were tough, they would hit you, and they didn’t teach you nothing.

They took you up in front of the class, they put your hands up and they’d punch you out.

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I got thrown out of Catholic school when I was eleven and PS. 10 when I was fifteen. I went through Catholic and public school and never learned how to read or write till I got clean when I was forty years old. So I always had this resentment about the teachers and the nuns.

Like why didn’t they know? Why didn’t they help me? Why did they put me in the back of