I am an Introverted Thinker. Grundoon was an Extroverted Feeler. Each of us could be extroverted or introverted, a thinker or a feeler. The types describe a preference. It's not one or the other, it's both. But there is a preferred mode.

One summer we spent a week at our paternal grandparents. They lived on the beach on Topsail Island. We were prepubesent, early teens, I think.

We loved the beach but there weren't other kids around. Our grandparents sent us to the church youth group.

We liked it. We got to play volleyball and we made bread. It was fun.

Now, Grundoon and I were being raised "Devout Athiest". My parents were atheist and didn't go to church. At the same time they loved to sing and sang in big choruses: the Messiah, the Mozart Requiem, my mother loved Byrd. We sang a Byrd Mass at her memorial in 2000. If you hear all of that sacred music, you actually get to know quite a bit of the bible. And even though they weren't Christians, my mother adored holidays. We had a creche at Christmas. We knew the bible stories. We learned songs like Little Moses and Mr. Noah.

The youth group leader invited us to sing in the church choir. We happily agreed because we both loved to sing. My parents arrived in town and came to church with my father's parents.

Grundoon and I were in the choir. We sang. Then they started communion. The chorus filed down to take communion. We did too, because we were absolutely clueless. Unbaptised, as far as I know. Innocent about the whole host thing. And we'd made the bread. We were polite and just did what everyone else did. I did notice that my grandparents had funny looks on their faces.

I didn't find out until years later that my grandparents were horrified. Not that we were taking communion unbaptised. They were afraid that my parents would be furious. At least, that's the story my mother told me.

At the time, grundoon and I were just pleased that we'd gotten to taste the bread. We also thought that churches were pretty strange places, where they talked about eating a dead man's body and drinking his blood.