Church.

Some of my earliest memories were of the days when my momma used to take me to Sunday School. I remember going upstairs with all the other kids to sing songs with Miss Donna.
We would all gather around the piano, and recite the books of the Bible, "Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers....". Then we would struggle and bicker over which instruments we would play along with "Jesus Loves Me". Every kid in class wanted desperately to wail on the triangle like there was no tomorrow. I always ended up forfeiting my turn on the triangle to bang the empty Country Crock butter tubs, or the sticks that you smack together (To avoid the younger or more annoying kids from having screaming tantrums).

Miss Donna and the kids would totally jam for like 30 seconds on this song:
"Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so,
little ones to him belong, they are weak but he is strong..."

After that we would go sit down and get a Bible lesson from a pamphlet about doubting Thomas, or stories of Jesus riding into the city or walking on water. We would do things like cut out paper fishes and loaves and write what we were thankful for. Usually I was thankful for my momma or our cat Raisin. At the end of class we would say "The Lord's Prayer".

While we said the prayer we had to close our eyes, bow our heads and clasp our hands. I didn't understand at the time what these gestures meant. At that point of my childhood I was still kind of afraid of closing my eyes. Every time I took a bath and momma had to pour water over my head to wash the shampoo out of my hair, I always pictured images like hooded phantoms spiriting me away to their dark land and I would never see momma or Raisin or Mickey again.
I have no idea where I could have gotten these ideas.
So when it came time to bow my head for prayer I got very anxious, and wished that prayer was oooh so much shorter. When Miss Donna got to the part about "thy Kingdom come" I always pictured a dark starless night and extremely spooky medieval castle with the battlements on fire. "Give us this day our daily bread," put a much nicer image in my head, thank the Lord for that, but that fleeting image was quickly smashed when trespasses were mentioned.
Trespasses, I had learned in Sunday school, were all of my sins, I was really a pretty good kid at that age but there were those rare occasions I pulled Bobby's hair, or punched him. I thought about those old Loony Toon cartoons where the devil would sit on a characters shoulder and tell him to do bad things. If the character did end up ignoring the angel on the other shoulder you would know by the end of the cartoon where he would end up.
This is kind of how my concept of heaven and hell was formed. Not by what was taught in Sunday school, but cartoons and stuff I saw on TV. I was just a kid you can't blame me. All that is hard to follow when you are kid. ("So you're trying to tell me there is a Father, Son and Holy Ghost--a three-in-one combo.")
Forgive us our trespasses was kind of heavy. I was asking God to forgive me for things I had done that might land me in hell. If I had died a moment before I was forgiven I might have gone to hell.
So as "The Lord's Prayer" goes on, it says "forgive those who trespass against us",
(not if they don't deserve it, was and still kind of is my philosophy.)
and as it goes on: "deliver us from evil," which was probably the worst part.
Just think of it, Evil is always out to get not only me but my entire Sunday School class and Miss Donna and everyone else. Hopefully the praying kept the Evil away.
Eventually praying would be too much for me and I would open my eyes and see everyone else praying. It seemed that if Evil or Phantoms didn't take them when they prayed, then I was going to be okay. I learned that it really didn't matter if I opened my eyes or not. Nobody noticed if I was praying because everyone else was. Sure my teacher told me it was disrespectful not to be humble while calling up God. But she didn't know, she couldn't have known. God probably knew, but I didn't care, there was no way I was gonna be put through that every Sunday.
I really didn't feel that there was anyone listening anyway.
It was just so bizarre to me, the act of praying. I would recite a bunch of words I didn't understand, (hallowed be thy name) to a being I understood even less, some kind of medieval, Middle Eastern overlord with, like a beard or something. My spiritual well being depended on this crazy God guy. I was being taught to feel shame for my actions, and feel happy about praising something I could not understand.

"The B-I-B-L-E
Yes, that's the book for me.
I stand alone on the word of God,
The B-I-B-L-E."