Deirdre Reilly: Young boys can teach you a lot (did you know God LOVES hockey?)

For the past seven months, once a week, I have been spending time with some very special men. They are cute, bright and funny, and, frankly, they are wearing me out. They happen to be 8 and 9 years old, and each week we meet to learn the ways of the Catholic Church. I am Mrs. Reilly, and I am their CCD teacher.

Once a week, on Tuesdays, we meet over at the Parish Center at St. Agnes, our neighborhood church. These boys are loaded for bear when I get them; hopped up on snacks they've retrieved from the bottoms of their backpacks, they are coming straight from school, where they have had to behave for hours on end. Every Tuesday they need a few minutes to wrestle each other before they get inside the classroom, and they are always starving. They are a gum-chewing, backpack-slinging, high-decibel group full of ideas, proclamations and questions - and some days not a lot of them about God, I'm sorry to say.