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The most surprising thing was that even though I had not been baptized, I was in a private boarding school run by Catholic monks, with all the praying which that involves - prayers before eating, and going to bed, before rising in the morning, before studying - and attending daily mass with communion. When, after six months of daily communion the brethren discovered that I had not been baptized, they seemed utterly horrified. I actually thought it was funny; it was in fact the only part of their mass that I liked, this free tasting of morsels of bread. It was also at the age of nine that I attained puberty. I enjoyed it very much and discovering unknown and secret pleasures, which no other nine year-old in the dormitory seemed yet to know about, was some consolation for my incomplete solitude. Finally, it was at the age of nine that I fell in love for the first time - and it was the intense kind of love that can seize children at that age. nm 14 1 1 14 Due to my improved classroom results, my mother had agreed not to send me back to boarding school, and I found myself in the fourth grade at the municipal grammar school in Ambert. There she was, nine years old or almost, and her name was Brigitte. I was shy and blushed quite ridiculously. It took only a glance during a medical visit, or perhaps a gesture of modesty to hide a non-existent bosom from my eyes, to release in me feelings of tenderness and a great desire to protect this apparently fragile being. The following year I found myself at the same school, in the fifth grade, in the company of my first love to whom I dared not even speak. Still, I managed to end up sitting one desk in front of her at the beginning of the school year, so that I could turn my head from time to time and admire her beloved face. I was only ten and was 1 teas 4 always thinking about her. The fact that I was close to her in class spurred me on, and I set myself to work hard enough to avoid having to repeat a year. In this way, I moved up to the sixth grade without the least interest in my studies. Unfortunately, we were now constantly changing classes and had different teachers instead of just one. As a result, I was almost always 128 INTELLIGENT DESIGN: MESSAGE FROM THE DESIGNERS