I came downstairs to the kitchen, where my mother was washing the dishes

and my father was reading the paper or something,

and I sort of presented myself to them in the doorway, and they said,

"Hey, happy birthday!" And I said, "I'm seven."

And my father smiled and said,

"Well, you know what that means, don't you?"

And I said, "Yeah, that I'm going to have a party and a cake

and get a lot of presents?" And my dad said, "Well, yes.

But, more importantly, being seven means that you've reached the age of reason,

and you're now capable of committing any and all sins against God and man."

(Laughter)

Now, I had heard this phrase, "age of reason," before.

Sister Mary Kevin had been bandying it about

my second-grade class at school. But when she said it,

the phrase seemed all caught up in the excitement of preparations

for our first communion and our first confession,

and everybody knew that was really all about the white dress and the white veil,

and anyway, I hadn't really paid all that much attention to that phrase, "age of reason."

So, I said, "Yeah, yeah, age of reason. What does that mean again?"

And my dad said, "Well, we believe in the Catholic Church

that God knows that little kids don't know the difference between right and wrong,

but when you're seven, you're old enough to know better.

So, you've grown up, and reached the age of reason, and now

God will start keeping notes on you and begin your permanent record."

(Laughter)

And I said, "Oh. Wait a minute. You mean all that time,

up till today, all that time I was so good, God didn't notice it?"

And my mom said, "Well, I noticed it."

(Laughter)

And I thought, "How could I not have known this before?

How could it not have sunk in when they'd been telling me?

All that being good and no real credit for it.

And, worst of all, how could I not have realized this very important information

until the very day that it was basically useless to me?"

So I said, "Well, Mom and Dad, what about Santa Claus?

I mean, Santa Claus knows if you're naughty or nice, right?"

And my dad said, "Yeah, but, honey,

I think that's technically just between Thanksgiving and Christmas."

And my mother said, "Oh, Bob, stop it. Let's just tell her.

I mean, she's seven. Julie, there is no Santa Claus."

(Laughter)

Now, this was actually not that upsetting to me.

My parents had this whole elaborate story about Santa Claus:

how they had talked to Santa Claus himself and agreed

that instead of Santa delivering our presents over the night of Christmas Eve,

like he did for every other family

who got to open their surprises first thing Christmas morning,

our family would give Santa more time.

Santa would come to our house while we were at nine o'clock high mass

on Christmas morning, but only if all of us kids did not make a fuss.

Which made me very suspicious.

It was pretty obvious that it was really our parents giving us the presents.

I mean, my dad had a very distinctive wrapping style,

and my mother's handwriting was so close to Santa's.

Plus, why would Santa save time by having to loop back

to our house after he'd gone to everybody else's?

There's only one obvious conclusion to reach from this mountain of evidence:

our family was too strange and weird

for even Santa Claus to come visit,

and my poor parents were trying to protect us from the embarrassment,

this humiliation of rejection by Santa, who was jolly --

but, let's face it, he was also very judgmental.

So, to find out that there was no Santa Claus at all was actually sort of a relief.

I left the kitchen not really in shock about Santa,

but rather I was just dumbfounded

about how I could have missed this whole age of reason thing.

It was too late for me, but maybe I could help someone else,

someone who could use the information.

They had to fit two criteria:

they had to be old enough to be able to understand

the whole concept of the age of reason, and not yet seven.

The answer was clear: my brother Bill. He was six.

Well, I finally found Bill about a block away from our house

at this public school playground. It was a Saturday,

and he was all by himself, just kicking a ball against the side of a wall.

I ran up to him and said, "Bill!

I just realized that the age of reason starts when you turn seven,

and then you're capable of committing any and all sins

against God and man." And Bill said, "So?" And then I said,

"So, you're six. You have a whole year to do anything you want to

and God won't notice it." And he said, "So?" And I said,

"So? So everything!" And I turned to run. I was so angry with him.

But when I got to the top of the steps, I turned around dramatically

and said, "Oh, by the way, Bill, there is no Santa Claus."

(Laughter)

Now, I didn't know it at the time,

but I really wasn't turning seven on September 10.

For my 13th birthday, I planned a slumber party with all of my girlfriends,

but a couple of weeks beforehand my mother took me aside and said,

"I need to speak to you privately.

September 10 is not your birthday. It's October 10." And I said, "What?"

(Laughter)

And she said, "Listen. The cut-off date to start kindergarten was September 15."

(Laughter)

"So, I told them that your birthday was on September 10,

and then I wasn't sure that you weren't just going to go blab it all over the place,

so I started to tell you your birthday was September 10.

But, Julie, you were so ready to start school, honey. You were so ready."

I thought about it, and when I was four,

I was already the oldest of four children,

and my mother even had another child to come,

so what I think she understandably really meant was that she was so ready,

she was so ready. Then she said,

"Don't worry, Julie, every year on October 10 when it was your birthday

but you didn't realize it, I made sure

that you ate a piece of cake that day."

(Laughter)

Which was comforting, but troubling.

My mother had been celebrating my birthday with me, without me.

What was so upsetting about this new piece of information

was not that I was going to have to change the date of my slumber party

with all of my girlfriends,

what was most upsetting was that this meant that I was not a Virgo.

I had a huge Virgo poster in my bedroom,

and I read my horoscope every single day, and it was so totally me.

(Laughter)

And this meant that I was a Libra?

So, I took the bus downtown to get the new Libra poster.

The Virgo poster is a picture of a beautiful woman with long hair,

sort of lounging by some water,

but the Libra poster is just a huge scale.

This was around the time that I started filling out physically,

and I was filling out a lot more than a lot of the other girls,

and, frankly, the whole idea that my astrological sign was a scale

just seemed ominous and depressing.

(Laughter)

But I got the new Libra poster,

and I started to read my new Libra horoscope,

and I was astonished to find that it was also totally me.

It wasn't until years later, looking back

on this whole age-of-reason/change-of-birthday thing,

that it dawned on me: I wasn't turning seven

when I thought I turned seven. I had a whole other month

to do anything I wanted to before God started keeping tabs on me.

Oh, life can be so cruel.

One day, two Mormon missionaries came to my door.

Now, I just live off a main thoroughfare in Los Angeles,

and my block is -- well, it's a natural beginning

for people who are peddling things door to door.

Sometimes I get little old ladies from the Seventh Day Adventist Church

showing me these cartoon pictures of heaven.

And sometimes I get teenagers who promise me that they won't join a gang

and just start robbing people if I only buy

some magazine subscriptions from them.

So, normally I just ignore the doorbell, but on this day I answered.

And there stood two boys, each about 19,

in white starched short-sleeved shirts, and they had little name tags

that identified them as official representatives

of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

and they said they had a message for me from God.

I said, "A message for me? From God?" And they said, "Yes."

Now, I was raised in the Pacific Northwest,

around a lot of Church of Latter-day Saints people and, you know,

I've worked with them and even dated them,

but I never really knew the doctrine or what they said to people

when they were out on a mission, and I guess I was, sort of, curious,

so I said, "Well, please, come in." And they looked really happy,

because I don't think this happens to them all that often.

(Laughter)

And I sat them down, and I got them glasses of water --

OK, I got it. I got them glasses of water.

Don't touch my hair, that's the thing.

(Laughter)

You can't put a video of myself in front of me

and expect me not to fix my hair.

(Laughter)

OK. So I sat them down and I got them glasses of water,

and after niceties they said, "Do you believe that God loves you with all his heart?"

And I thought, "Well, of course I believe in God,

but, you know, I don't like that word, heart,

because it anthropomorphizes God,

and I don't like the word, 'his,' either, because that sexualizes God."

But I didn't want to argue semantics with these boys,

so after a very long, uncomfortable pause, I said

"Yes, yes, I do. I feel very loved."

And they looked at each other and smiled,

like that was the right answer. And then they said,

"Do you believe that we're all brothers and sisters on this planet?"

And I said, "Yes, I do. Yes, I do." And I was so relieved

that it was a question I could answer so quickly.

And they said, "Well, then we have a story to tell you."

And they told me this story all about this guy named Lehi,

who lived in Jerusalem in 600 BC.

Now, apparently in Jerusalem in 600 BC,

everyone was completely bad and evil. Every single one of them:

man, woman, child, infant, fetus.

And God came to Lehi and said to him, "Put your family on a boat

and I will lead you out of here." And God did lead them.

He led them to America.

I said, "America? From Jerusalem to America by boat in 600 BC?"

And they said, "Yes."

(Laughter)

Then they told me how Lehi and his descendants

reproduced and reproduced, and over the course of 600 years

there were two great races of them, the Nephites and the Lamanites,

and the Nephites were totally, totally good -- each and every one of them --

and the Lamanites were totally bad and evil --

every single one of them just bad to the bone.

(Laughter)

Then, after Jesus died on the cross for our sins,

on his way up to heaven he stopped by America and visited the Nephites.

(Laughter)

And he told them that if they all remained totally, totally good --

each and every one of them --

they would win the war against the evil Lamanites.

But apparently somebody blew it,

because the Lamanites were able to kill all the Nephites.

All but one guy, this guy named Mormon,

who managed to survive by hiding in the woods.

And he made sure this whole story was written down

in reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics chiseled onto gold plates,

which he then buried near Palmyra, New York.

(Laughter)

Well, I was just on the edge of my seat.

(Laughter)

I said, "What happened to the Lamanites?"

And they said, "Well, they became our Native Americans here in the U.S."

And I said, "So, you believe the Native Americans are descended

from a people who were totally evil?" And they said, "Yes."

Then they told me how this guy named Joseph Smith