When I was in kinder (I was 4 or 5 years old then) I was fond of reading books about dinosaurs. I knew their names, how they looked like and what they ate. I knew about fossils, excavations and the scientists’ theories on how they became extinct. But alongside the dino-books that I read, my mom and the school (which was run entirely by nuns) that I went to back then encouraged us to read the bible. I was most familiar with the story of creation found in the book of Genesis, and so I was able to notice that dinosaurs weren’t described in it. I was told that the fossils were evidences of their existence, and now, I just read that the bible holds nothing of that sort. To ease my confusion, I asked my teacher, who was a nun, why was this the case. She looked at me with shocked and disdainful eyes and made me stand in the corner of the room, facing the wall for the whole day, only making me stop to eat my snacks.

That was the first time I knew of how power from authority other than my parents tasted like and this was also my fondest memory of what “smart-asses” get when asking too much questions. It was only when I grew up that I asked myself if there was anyone in this world that suffered the same fate as I did from asking the same question.